Fluff and Happenstance or All by Spontaneity
by Ze Dybbuk
Summary: Pit's heart is set on wooing infamous she-devil Samus Aran, or at least on making Ike woo her for him, but when threats are made against Ike's life, will this turn into more fast-paced drama than the two of them can handle? NOW ILLUSTRATED! Sort of.
1. THIS IS THE WELCOME MAT OF PIT AND FATTY

**Disclaimer:**All characters, etc., are (c) Nintendo and not me. My brain might have made a dolphin giggle and accidently typed some Owl City lyrics in here too, and if so, they're not (c) me either.

**Rated:** Mostly for coarse language. There is also some violence, as well as general bedlam and shenanigans. And even though the "story" generally revolves around Pit trying to get Samus to fall in love with him, the most sexually explicit thing you can expect is Pit waxing melancholy because Pikachu is hotter than he is. So no worries there.

**Author's Note:** Well here it is at last, folks! The barely-awaited sequel to my first crack-fic monstrosity, _Fluff and Circumstance or The Cult of "Ario"_.  
So here's that ( s/5408149/1/Fluff_and_Circumstance_or_The_Cult_of_Ario) just in case you missed those festive festivities. And hey, in the very likely event that you really don't give a shit, a pretty satisfactory summary is sandwiched in with the second paragraph. So.

Oh goodness, what kind of mischeif and brouhaha will Fatty and the Kid cook up this time? Oh goodness, oh goodness indeed.

**EDIT: **I'd like to thank the beautiful and fantastic Mr. MessengerOfDreams for the book cover! He gave me, like, twelve of them, actually, or something. My point is that there were a bunch, and all of them were freaking sweet, and choosing one was not easy.

LOOK AT THAT SUCKER. LOOK AT IT! But not too closely. I can't guarantee what'll happen. Might be it'll rip your face off and glue it back on upside down. Hard to say.

I'll stop blathering eventually. Eventually is now.

Okay go.

* * *

FLUFF AND HAPPENSTANCE or ALL BY SPONTANEITY

Ike was vegging out one sweaty afternoon, squatting on his festively disgusting sofa that was covered so thickly in ketchup stains that it looked like the design of some psychotic and malcontent fashionista. He was watching _Let's Make a Deal_, rooting for the guy in the chicken suit, and wondering ever so often in a detached and indistinct way where the hell Pit was.

He didn't _really_ care, but as always, whenever Pit wasn't plainly visible, Ike got a restless nervous feeling, and thought about how much, as the guy's roommate, he could be held accountable for legally. A few months earlier, Pit had arranged a Coalition Against Evil, and led a valiant and slightly terrifying holy crusade against Mario and his eggplant-garnering minions of Evil. Mario, expressly speaking, hadn't actually had any eggplant-garnering minions of Evil, but Ike had still almost blown up anyway, and frankly the whole experience had made him a little leery of Pit and his flaming bullshit. And so it was with great trepidation, when Pit came staggering back into their room several hours later, red-eyed and carrying a box of who-the-hell-knows under one arm, that Ike asked, "Where ya been, Pit?"

"Fatty!" Pit barked, snapping his fingers and gesturing for Ike to get his bum ass off their nasty couch. "You're gonna help me with somethin', mmkay?"

Ike swatted a rogue Cheetoh off his knee. With the level of dignity that can only follow an action such as this, he replied, "No."

"What do you mean, 'no'!" Pit's eyes widened at this startling startlment. He made a few manic whimpering sounds and then tossed his myyyyystery box to the floor. He straightened his back, fluffed the feathers on his wings for an effect of added indignation, and then scoffed openly at Ike, the little fun-sucking heathen chicken addict.

"I _mean_, I'm not freaking _doing_it. Whatever it is. Just, just _no_, Pit. No."

"That's a load 'a crap, Fatty!" Pit waggled a finger at him dangerously. "After all I been there for you, after all those times I stuck by your side, you're just gonna turn around and hit me with this now, huh? And I thought we were _friends_, Fatty!"

"Alright, Pit," Ike said exasperatedly, getting to his feet and brushing sticky orange corn-and-artificial-cheese-crap off his hands. "I got a couple points. First off: quit calling me Fatty. I will freaking kill you. And all those times you were there for me and stuck by my side? I spent every moment telling you to go the hell away, so they don't count. And we are _not_ friends, Pit."

Pit just kinda stood there for a minute after Ike said that and was quiet. After a little while, he snapped out of it, shook his head, picked his myyyyystery box back up, and said, "Yeah, so anyway, I was figuring you could do this for me, huh? I need you to look through some of this crap—" and before Ike could say anything, Pit dumped the contents of his myyyyystery box in his lap, which was probably pretty hard to do since Ike was standing up. I guess he just must have kind of slung it at his legs, or something. I don't freaking know, I just write these things, nobody ever said I had to analyze the stupid physics too.

Yeah, so anyway, Ike was standing there, and his lap was full of Pit's myyyyystery crap, and he was looking pretty pissed off, but before he could start screaming, Pit managed to cut him off with his cheese-grater-across-the-forehead angel voice. "—and I need you to analyze this crap, and then you can come back and tell me what she's doing."

Ike stopped trying to brush myyyyystery crap off his legs long enough to give Pit a WTF look. "Tell you what _who's_ doing?"

For once, Pit looked uncomfortable. His emotions were normally in the family of violent paranoia, so the stark difference of this moment caught Ike off guard. Pit shifted his squirrelly feet and grumbled, "Nobody."

"Nobody," Ike said flatly.

"…yeah."

"You want me to look at this stuff, and then tell you from that what _nobody's_ been doing."

Pit shifty-eyed.

Ike bent down and violently snatched one of the myyyyystery items off the floor (by now they had all been un-stuck from his lap and had spontaneously arranged themselves by increasing size). It was a photograph, and his eyes widened when he saw who it was of.

He thrust the picture at his idiot roommate and flailed it. "_Samus Aran_!" he choked, "You want me to help you stalk _Samus Aran_!"

"Damnit, Fatty!" Pit stomped his foot, like a four year old throwing a tantrum because he wants to go home and watch Spongebob. "How the heck did you guess?"

Ike stared at him.

Pit was unfazed. "You see Fatty, this is why I need you to do my analyzing and thus n' such. Yer a wizard, Fatty. You're like, freaking Voldemort. You hath Telekinesis."

"Pit," Ike snapped, balling up the photo and bouncing it off his chest, "Even if any of that _remotely_ had made any sense, there is no way in hell I'm helping you stalk Samus Aran."

"Oh, I'm not trying to _stalk_ her," Pit said matter-of-factly as he tossed Ike a dismissive hand gesture.

"Then what the heck?"

Pit shifty-eyed and drummed his fingertips against one another. "I'm in love."

Ike vomited.

Pit gave him a minute to wipe off his chin, and then he continued. "Yeah, I'm so in love with her. And she's in love with me too Fatty, you'll see. She's just kinda stupid and she doesn't know it yet."

Ike _projectile_ vomited.

"You know, Fatty," Pit said with a sigh, wringing bile out of his toga, "Sometimes I get the feeling that you don't take me very seriously."

Ike thought about vomiting again, but his esophagus was getting kind of sore and he decided against it.

"Well then!" Pit announced in the world's most awesome transition, "Now that _that's_ out of the way, I guess we'd better head down to the theater."

"Oh God," said Ike, as a horrible, cackling fear shoved its fist through his chest and started squeezing his innards like one of those stress-relief eye ball popping dolls. "You don't wanna try and kill somebody again, do you?"

"Oh, _Ike_," Pit laughed in a lackadaisical way, "Of _course_ I wanna kill somebody! I'm just not 100% on _who_ yet, and hey, even if I was, it's not like I'd be rushin' off to try it again in the theater, huh? Twice in the same place is just bad style, Fatty. You gotta give me some cred."

Maybe Ike had a befuddled expression plastered across his cheesepuff-dusted face. Maybe Pit just wanted to taint the air a little more with his disgusting, screeching, prepubescent angel voice. Either way, he continued, "We're goin' to the theater because Master Hand has announced that he will be announcing an announcement, following the announcement of the announcement to be announced, which is what he had just announced, so he still has something left to announce."

Ike took a good twenty minutes to try and process that, gave up, and spat, "We live the most circular, formulaic lives of any video game characters in existence. What the _hell_ could Master Hand_possibly_ want to tell us that could have _any_ impact on our lives _whatsoever_?"

"I dunno, Fatty," Pit said, bopping up and down with impatience, "But your random italics are blowin' ma mind, and I think we'd better get down there before you have the chance to go droppin' any more, ya hear?"

* * *

So before Ike had the chance to go dropping any more mind-blowing random italics, he and Pit had shimmied on down to the theater, nearly drowning amid the undulating masses of Brawlerdom. Nobody ever went to the freaking theater, unless it was part of a super-secret mission to destroy Agents of the Eggplants, and so the unwashed masses had slowly developed a sinister curiosity for the place, sort of like a cyst that should have been popped four or five months ago. Master Hand knew this, and since he also knew that nobody gave Bowser's ripe red left ass cheek about anything he had to say, he had decided to call the meeting in this exotic place as opposed to a clearly mundane alternative, such as Planet Zebes or the moon. Now they would all show up anyway, whether they cared or not, drawn like fruit flies to a decaying zebra carcass. Master Hand was probably about ten times smarter than all the Brawlers put together. That's especially pathetic when you remember that he's just a giant floating hand and doesn't even have a skull in which to stash his brain.

Ike elbowed four or five Shy Guys in the head and shlopped himself down into a seat. Pit took one next to him and immediately started fidgeting and stretching his wings and crossing his legs like he had to pee and asking Ike when it was gonna start and could he please have money for popcorn and why did the old woman behind them smell like radiator fluid. Ike had been about six seconds away from strangling him, but then Pit scrambled up his sleeve and squatted on his head, and this took Ike so by surprise that he forgot all about it.

"Pit, what the _hell_ are you doing!"

"_Reconnaissance_, O-fatty-con," Pit replied matter-of-factly. He leaned out over the cusp of Ike's head, and Ike had to flail his arms to keep from toppling over. "This is the best excuse in the history of history of history to do some serious scopin' for my mission, and if you think Imma just let it blow by for the sake of something as worthless as not making you look like an idiot, then you got another thing coming."

"_Pit,_ what _mission_?" Ike clapped his hands around the psychotic little angel's wrists and wrenched him off his head. "You're not even making sense within your own crazy little world anymore!"

Pit pushed his lower lip out and scowled at him. "Dangit Fatty, I was just talking about it twenty minutes ago! _Samus_!"

Ike sighed. "Right, right, you're stalking her, I forgot."

"I'm not _stalking_her! I'm just trying to learn everything about her that I could ever possibly know, but without talking to her and without her knowing! That is totally freaking different than stalking somebody! Now quit saying that, Fatty; I'm sick of your crap!"

Ike considered responding to that, but before he could string the words together, Pit clobbered him in the head and pointed a shaking finger towards the other side of the auditorium.

"_Fatty_," Pit said hoarsely, "lookit, _lookit_…"

Samus was talking animatedly to someone, and once she sat, the two of them could see that the person it had been was Pikachu.

"AAAAARGH!" Pit screamed and began yanking on his hair, "That _dirty little_ RAT!"

Ike forced him back into his seat and kept a hand pressed into his chest, with the indistinct hope that fewer people would stare at them if Pit was sitting down.

Pit began hiccupping and sobbing quietly into his upturned palms. "Oh, why didn't I tell her sooner," he moaned, "We could have been so happy together, and now she's gone and I'll never know!"

"What is the _matter_ with you!" Ike snapped, retracting his hand before Pit could dribble snot onto it.

For whatever reason, that comment snapped Pit out of it instantly. "You know what, Fatty?" he said with as much courage as his broken heart could muster, "I don't have to bugger with this crap!"

Ike was just happy he wasn't leaking snot on things anymore. "Yeah, that's right, Pit," he said, not really listening.

"Pikachu isn't _really_ the right one for her! Being the _first_ one doesn't make you the _right_ one, huh?"

"Yeah, Pit, yeah."

"And, yeah, I guess Pikachu _is_ really smokin' hot," he admitted reluctantly, stealing another glance at the ripped rodent, with his sleek blonde fur that whispered gently in the breeze, his features that looked as if they had been sculpted by the fingers of God (or at least Ken Sugimori), his eyes that sparkled with the disbelief of watching as ten million fireflies lit up the world as I fell asleep. "There's no way I could ever compare to that," he added sadly.

"Yeah, Pit, yeah."

"But you know what?" Pit said, starting to sound plucky again, "I'm still better for Samus than that rat is, and she's still gonna be happier with me than she could ever be with _Pikachu_. Sexy yellow rat body or no."

Ike's mind had snapped back upon hearing the word "sex." "Wait, dude," he began, "Did you just seriously say 'Sexy yellow rat body'?"

Before Ike and Pit even had the chance to begin _that_ fascinating discussion, however, Master Hand finally floated out over the stage.

He was greeted by deafening booing, a hail of blunt objects being lobbed at him from all angles, and the sound of a pitchfork being sharpened against a whetstone.

"SHUT THE HELL UP," Master Hand boomed. The Brawlers obliged. Except for Fox, who couldn't stop himself from throwing one last cheese wedge. It ricocheted off Master Hand and pegged Link in the eye.

"ALRIGHT," Master Hand said evenly, apparently figuring that this was as subdued as his audience was likely to get. "I'VE GOT GOOD NEWS FOR EVERYBODY."

The Pokémon Trainer screamed, "Shove it up your butt!" The rest of the room erupted in a cacophony of approval. Fox threw another cheese wedge. I'm not really sure why he walks around with so many cheese wedges. We should ask the Mythbusters.

Master Hand loosed a bolt of electricity from his pointer. Pokémon Trainer was reduced to a pile of ash. It's super effective!

"I HAVE NO BUTT INTO WHICH THIS GOOD NEWS COULD BE SHOVED. YOUR ARGUMENT IS INVALID."

"Get ON WITH IT!" roared Lucario, waggling his little Lucario fists with fury.

Master Hand charred Lucario and continued, "ALRIGHT FINE! THE GOOD NEWS IS THAT TOMORROW IS THE OFFICIAL START OF NEXT SEASON'S TOURNAMENT."

The Brawlers all shrieked as if their flesh was being cooked, which I guess was fitting for Pokémon Trainer and Lucario. Fox threw another cheese wedge. He does it when he approves, he does it when he disapproves. I think he has a dependency.

Master Hand's ire finally bubbled over. He chucked a lightning bolt at Fox, who ducked, and it hit Olimar instead. "ENOUGH!" he boomed, "WE GO THROUGH THIS EVERY DAMN SEASON! DOING THIS IS YOUR FREAKING _JOB_, AND YOU _WILL_ SUCK IT UP AND DEAL WITH IT!"

Master Hand pushed his horn-rimmed glasses up his knuckles and glanced down at his notes. "MATCHES TOMORROW ARE TOON LINK VS. PIKACHU, DIDDY KONG VS. R.O.B., AND," he squinted his eyes (?), "IKE VS. SAMUS."

Pit nearly had a coronary. "Fatty! _Fatty_!" he gasped, reaching over and grabbing Ike roughly by the front of the tunic, "Fatty, did you _hear_ that?"

Ike _had_ heard it, but the difference was that he actually _was_ having a coronary. Oh goodness, oh goodness, he'd just spent six months doing nothing but sitting around and eating cheesepuffs and now he had to actually go try and kill somebody again. Oh goodness.

Pit had Ike's tunic bunched up in both of his sweaty little angel mitts, shaking him, eyes glistening with an insanity that could never come from watching any number of fireflies, even if they were lighting up an entire universe, and even if I wasn't just falling asleep but slipping into a coma. Ok, srsly, no moar OwlCity, I promise. "Fatty! Fatty!" Pit stammered at him, a bead of drool slipping out of his lips. "This is the best thing that has ever happened ever! _Ever_!"

Ike vomited on him, but Pit still didn't go away. That was when Ike knew his goose was cooked. Or chicken fried, in his case.

The Brawlers were all trickling out of the auditorium now, grumbling amongst themselves with a general flavor of anticlimax and despondency. Because Pit was generally renowned for being out of his dripping mind; and also because he currently stank like bile from Ike's vomit festival; the crowd parted before him like the seas before Moses. He took off running for his room like a deranged wallaby, dragging Ike along behind him by his pudgy wrist.

"Pit…wh-what the…_hell_…?"

"We gotta _plan_, Fatty!" Pit roared at him, "You're meeting Samus! _Tomorrow_! We've got to make sure you say and do _just the right things_ so she falls in love with me!"

Pit thundered up a stairwell, and Ike's head knocked into every step.

"This is the sort of perfect, beautiful, serendipitous opportunity that romantics like me lie awake at night and pine for! I couldn't have _hoped_ for a more magical way to impress her, for a more profound and caring gesture of my good graces and sympathies!"

Ike plucked a loose tooth out of his jaw and flicked it to the side.

"And it's all by spontaneity!" Pit continued to gush, as if he were a sickening passage from some low-brow teen romance novel wherein the main vampiric love interest is described in nauseatingly infinitesimal detail, but whose deeper qualities are frustratingly never explored; much to the reader's chagrin; until they realize, later, and with a flash of epiphany, that the reason such qualities are lacking in the text is because such qualities are lacking in the characters themselves, and that the point of it all isn't simply to showcase base drives, but to illustrate that such plebian fantasies are in themselves the means that blind us to the true and staggering breadth of these sacred emotions, the brilliantly vast and enchanting world simply snuffed and squandered in the name of carnal instinct and instant gratification; they have a happiness, yes, but that happiness is merely a paltry and whimpering substitute, merely the semblance of true joy, a joy which is barred from them forever, merely by the shocking incomplexity of their own hearts and moral lowness.

And yes, Mr. Ed, that thar is how 'zactly Pit did gush.

Anyway.

"You gotta work with me, Fatty!" Pit continued (but not gushingly; I ain't writing that crap again), "Or else you might as well just rip my heart out and throw it on the ground and stomp on it, because an opportunity this fantastically perfect is never gonna swing by ever again!"

"Pit," Ike spat, before his mouth could fill with blood again, "You do realize that _I'm_ the one who's going to be fighting her tomorrow, right?"

Pit stopped for a moment and glared at him. "Well, I don't see what _that's_ got to do with anything, _Fatty_. You're still my friend, and what are friends for if not to force your crushes to fall in love with you?"

"Pit," said Ike, "We are _not_ friends."

This minor little detail had never struck Pit before as being particularly relevant, and now was no exception. "Or whatchu tryin' to say, Fatty, huh," Pit continued, scrunching his face into what he hoped was a dangerous, intimidating look, "Is it that _you_ want Samus for yourself? You're trying to sabotage my romantic escapade so you can have her all to yourself? Is _that_ what's going on here, you sick, _sick_ little sickopathic sicko?"

Ike considered telling Pit that he didn't need to sabotage any of his romantic plans because he was sure that Pit would sabotage them himself, but then something much more relevant to his Ike's narrow interests caught his eye and he stopped and gasped and pointed. "Look Pit!" he cried, "It's a pumpkin!"

"Fatty, that is clearly not a pumpkin," Pit said with a gusty sigh after he glanced at the source of Ike's fascination with as little energy expended as possible. "It's a bomb. And quit changing the subject; don't you know there are more important things going on right now than whether or not the alien object sitting in our hallway is a bomb or a pumpkin?"

"It _is_ a pumpkin!" Ike snapped, bending down next to said orange ball o' festive harvest time spookiness.

"No! It's a bomb!"

"It's a pumpkin!"

"It's a _bomb_!"

"Pit, it's a freaking _pumpkin_! Don't you even know what a pumpkin is?"

"Oh I know what a pumpkin is, Fatty," Pit nodded solemnly, narrowing his squirrely bastard angel eyes, "In fact, I have such a rock-solid pumpkin understanding that I can tell you straight up that pumpkins don't have chunks of metal sticking out of them. And since that thing _does_ have a hunk of metal sticking out of it, it _can't_ be a pumpkin, and logic demands that it must instead be the pumpkin's closest natural relative. Which is the bomb."

Ike stared at him.

"It's basic biology, Fatty. Not my fault you spent your high school career fantasizing about chicken instead of learning _science_."

Ike was fully prepared to stare at Pit for as long as this awkward moment deemed necessary, but then the pumpkin (or bomb) caught his eye again, so he stared at that instead.

"Wait a minute!" Ike exclaimed as his little science-deprived Ike brain began spinning at maximum overdrive, "It's got a knife stuck in it!"

Pit scoffed. "Fatty, what did I _just_ freaking say!"

Ike reached out and spun the pumpkin so its opposite side faced out. Written on it in sloppy black sharpie was:

IKE

Ike's face went white.

Pit shrugged. "Maybe they meant a different 'Ike'!" he said cheerfully.

"Pit, it's on our welcome mat."

This point might not have been as convincing if Pit had not earlier decorated said welcome mat with his own black sharpie:

THIS IS THE WELCOME MAT OF PIT AND FATTY. IF YOU HAVE PREPARED A THREATENING PUMPKIN FOR EITHER OF US, PLEASE LEAVE IT UPON THIS WELCOME MAT SO WE CAN BE SURE THAT YOU MEANT IT FOR US AND NOT A DIFFERENT PIT/FATTY. THANK YOU.

Pit rubbed his chin in a pensive sort of way. "I still think I was too vague."

Ike took him by the shoulders and shook with gusto. "No, Pit, you don't get it!" He said frantically, "Somebody wants to kill me!"


	2. Take this mop, you'll need it

**Author's Note:** Blah blah blah here's the next part. Finally. Boys and girls, this is why we don't start publishing chapters until we know what we are doing.

On another fun note of failure, I'm having a contest! You might have seen the story already. But anyway, if your interested, it's for Smash thrillers, and the rules have changed a little bit since I first posted it last night. Winners get a drawing of some sort! I decided to upload some sample pictures for people to gawk upon as well. And, uh, that's that.

And of course Link is a hoarder! No one in the world needs to walk around with that many empty bottles on their person. It's just not healthy.

Also, thanks again to Souldin for the thoughtful review! I do appreciate.

* * *

Ike was still simpering like a scared little pussy boy, but thankfully Pit was man enough to drag him into their flat and sissy-push him down onto a bar stool. There he sat and quivered while Pit bustled about, brainstorming and rambling conspiracy theories and generally just exacerbating an already crappy situation.

"You got any enemies, Fatty?" Pit waited about one eighth of a second for a response before he continued, "Yeah, I know, that really wouldn't help us narrow anything down, huh. Everybody already hates you so much it could seriously be any of them. Well, except for _me_, of course. Not only am I your best and only friend, but also bombs and pumpkins happen to be in the same phylum as eggplants, and therefore I can't touch one without all my skin melting off."

It was around then that Pit noticed he himself had carried the pumpkin inside, and he shrieked and flung it overhead. It flew across the room and shot through a plaster wall, leaving a crumbling, pumpkin-shaped hole in its wake.

Pit scrutinized his palms for any signs of skin meltage. He wiped his brow and heaved a sigh of relief. "Damn, Fatty, that was almost a catastrophe."

Ike was staring at him and trembling, although for whatever funny reason, he tensed up and shrank back and made a hissing sound when Pit came over and laid an arm on his shoulders comfortingly. "Now, now, Fatty," he said, nuzzling his chest and flicking his eyelashes and generally popping Ike's very clearly defined personal bubble, "I know that getting a death threat can sometimes be a real day-ruiner, but you just gotta buck up buddy, mmkay? There's really nothing you can do except sit back and wait for whoever the heck to come over and kill you, so in the meantime why don't we have a little fun and think about something else?"

"Pit," Ike said, his trembling knuckles poised just below his lips, his voice breaking with rapidly approaching hysteria, "Pit, if you're going to suggest that we think about ways to help you stalk Samus again, I swear to God, you will _die_."

"Alright Fatty," Pit said in his best I'm-not-dicking-around-anymore voice, "I've got a couple points." He stepped back and held up a finger. "First of all, you just _got_ a death threat, so you should know that giving them out to people, especially people like me who you really, _really_ love, is just not a real dandy-n-terrific thing to do." Pit held up another finger, except he'd only really seen things explained in terms of fingers a couple times before and only had the vaguest of ideas of how it was supposed to work, so he just put his first finger down and recycled it again. Go green! "Second of all…I told you I'm not _really_ stalking her."

There was a sound like a howler monkey being dropped into a bathtub along with a hairdryer, and suddenly Pit found himself splayed out on the ground with Ike's hands clapped around his windpipe. If he found this little development at all unnerving, it didn't much show, and instead he calmly said, "Fatty, it's for reasons like these that people are hooking you up with death threats to begin with." Except Ike's hands were kind of around his windpipe, remember, so it really just came out like a kind of gurgle-hiss. Have you ever tried to use a Macintosh to rip a piece of bologna to iTunes? It was kind of like that.

It also probably goes without saying that this was the most fun Ike had had in quite some time, and he would have blissfully continued strangling his idiot roommate except that it was about then he noticed someone was looming over and watching him.

Ike squawked and staggered backwards on his hands and feet. The interloper stared at him quizzically. Or as quizzically as he could, rather; he had one hand clapped over a swollen and cheese-scented eye.

"_Link_!" Ike balked, "What the _hell_ are you doing in my flat?"

Link's ears dropped sheepishly and he drummed the fingers of his free hand against his chest. "Well, you left your front door hanging wide open, and I heard the screaming, and saw the strangulation…" He trailed off here, looking a tad contrite. "I really hope I'm not interrupting anything important!"

Ike never actually answered that, instead opting to glare at Link in a hardcore and malcontent sort of fashion, gradually narrowing his eyes until they appeared as little more that thin black slits that even a lone quark would struggle to pass through. Link, of course, had been raised by a tree, and given that, didn't really have a solid capacity for reading body language.

"Okay good!" he said, and nervously glanced from side to side before beckoning to Ike. Ike really didn't feel like moving though, and after about five minutes of nonstop beckoning, Link got sick of waiting and just walked over to him. Link stood there for a while and flicked his ears and kneaded his hands and hemmed and hawed and pussyfooted around. As much as he really didn't feel like moving, Ike was sorely tempted to get up and just walk away from him, but at that moment Link finally manned up and said what he needed to freaking say: "I need you guys to help me with something."

"God damnit, no!"

"What!" Link was all indignant at this indignation, the little handout-expecting shmutz. "But I helped you with _your_ problem!"

"What the _hell_ are you talking about?"

"Oh, you know," Link said, gesturing ineffectually at the air, "a couple months ago? The whole, whatever, Mario and Wario and Lucario thing? With the, uh, the, uh, Ultimate Source of Sub-whatever? And, uh?"

Ike stared at him like he was talking gibberish, because hey, guess what. "Link, you didn't really _do_ anything for that."

Link flicked his ears back and snapped, "Yes I did, too!"

"No, you just kind of _existed_."

It was around then that the squirrelly bastard teeth-grinding-into-concrete angel voice decided to kick in again, Pit having successfully put his windpipe back into the right shape. "Fatty," he grumbled, "don't be a freaking _communist_. We're indebted to Link, and if he wants us to come and pay it back to him now, then we have to go and freaking _do it_. Our whole economy functions on a system of trust and responsibility, and I'm not going to let you plunge the whole damn society into chaos just because you don't freaking feel like _doing_ anything because somebody left a stupid death-threat bomb on your doormat!"

"Somebody left a stupid death-threat bomb on your doormat?" Link copy/pasted from Pit's inane ramblings with an air of hopefulness.

Ike snapped at him. "No! It was a pumpkin." Link seemed disappointed. "And anyway, we're not indebted to you for anything; you're a freeloader asshole and you need to get out of my house!"

"Oh, shut up, I helped you guys out back then and you totally know it!"

"Yeah? And what'd you do then?"

Link straightened himself proudly and said, "I made the popcorn."

There was silence.

In a tone of consideration, Pit said, "It's true; he _did_ make the popcorn, Fatty."

Ike stared at him.

"So, y'gonna help me out here or not?"

"No!"

"_Ike_!"

The little hamster that lived in Ike's brain had just been goaded one too many times with an electric tong. It squealed and started foaming at the mouth and running around in little circles and knocking over its little bowl of alfalfa pellets and flinging cedar chips all over the damn place. Ike had gone red-eyed, and he jabbed his pointer finger into Link's skinny little fairy boy chest, and he started screaming at him. "NO! SON OF A BITCH! You want me to help you with your stupid whatever; Pit wants me to help _him_ with his even _stupider_ whatever! Ignoring both of you at the same time is going to take too much coordination! I can't deal with this CRAP ANYMORE!"

Luckily for most parties involved, Link isn't batshit crazy, he's just lonely and sort of a bum. So when Ike started screaming at him, Link was sane enough to be terrified, and Ike felt kind of ashamed of himself, the little anti-debt Nazi.

So then Ike got to scratch the back of his head and sculpt his best attempt at an apology. "Uh…sorry about…yeah."

But by this point Link had stopped looking like he was about to wet himself and started scrutinizing Ike's face as if it were a binding legal document. "Did you say that Pit's whatever was even stupider than _my_ whatever?"

Ike had been about to tell him that yes, indeed, Pit's whatever was very much stupider than Link's whatever, whatever his whatever might be, but then Pit was all filled with indignation and he gasped and fluffed out his little feather jobbies.

"Oh, it _so_ is not!" he cried, "Ike's just saying that because he's jealous! Jealous of my _love_."

Link and Ike exchanged glances. "So who is it?" Link asked.

"Samus Aran."

No sooner had the name crossed his lips did Pit dive-tackle him, screaming. "FATTY!" he roared, "You can't just go a-bee-boppin around, droppin' all of my heart's deepest secrets!"

Ike had arrived at that magical state of apathy where he just sort of lay on the ground.

Pit's rage had degraded into hysterics by this point, and he lay sprawled across Ike in an awkward flavor of man hug, sobbing uncontrollably and occasionally beating one of his fists against Ike's chest. "Do you have any _idea_ what you've done?" he choked, "Don't you even have any _idea_?"

Throughout most of this, Link had just been watching and being faintly amused. But around now, he began to remember that old feeling of oh-god-what-the-f*ck-have-I-put-myself-in-the-middle-of that he had evidently forgotten since he had voluntarily walked into his last horrific adventure with Ike and Pit. He decided to try and play it cool and casual, and he spoke in the reassuring and slightly patronizing tone usually reserved only by desperate babysitters for the demonic toddler who is dangling their car keys over a toilet bowl. "Pit, really, it's fine, buddy. I think it's kind of sweet that you have a crush on Samus."

Pit hiccupped and wiped his face. "Aw, Link, it wasn't _that_ that I was worried about. It's just that, well, you know. Since Ike told you that I love her, I'm going to have to kill you."

Link pissed himself.

Pit passed him a handy mop like nothing happened and continued. "Which is really kind of a shame, you know. I had always thought you were an okay guy. What with the making of the popcorn and all."

He shrugged and sidestepped away from Link, (who hadn't really pissed himself; Pit was just handing him the mop because it was crowding up his thinking space) and he reached in through the pumpkin-shaped hole in the wall and groped around for the cleaver that had been stabbed into the pumpkin as a part of Ike's stupid death threat. Link had his teeth and fingers clenched and his ears flicked back. Pit turned back around towards him with the knife in his teeth and Link screamed bloody murder, which is exactly what was about to happen, durr hurr. Meanwhile Ike was lying on the floor in his blissful apathy.

"Wai-w-w-w-wait-wai-wai-wai-w-w-wai-wait!" Link shoved his hands towards creepy creeper Pit and took a step back, "You don't have to do this, Pit! I could, um, help you!"

Pit had ceased his creepy creeping for a hot minute to consider all the benefits and consequences of this offer in a thorough and dignified way. Although a good deal of the effect was lost on account of the fact that he still had the knife in his teeth as if he were an unwashed pirate. Pit narrowed his squirrely bastard creepy creeper unwashed pirate eyes. "_How_?"

Link shifty-eyed. "I, uh, know things."

The psychotic angel considered this for a bit longer, then he finally nodded and stabbed his cleaver down into the Formica countertop. Link was giddy with the knowledge that he was no longer about to be shanked.

"Follow me!" he cried, gesturing wildly for Pit to, huh, guess what. Pit had been about to just tear off after him, but then he remembered that Ike was still lying on the floor and being peaceful and happy, and frankly folks, he just couldn't allow such an atrocity as that.

He grabbed him by the collar and shook him roughly. "Fatty! Wake up, Fatty!" he barked, "Link's gonna help us again!"

After being jolted back to reality and given a minute to re-focus his eyes, Ike asked a very good question: "What the hell do you mean, 'again'?"

But Pit had already clenched Ike's wrist in his unbreakable fluffy angel vice grip and was charging down the hallway after Link.

* * *

Happily for Ike, who was getting mighty tired of having his face drug against the linoleum, Link was only leading them to his own flat, which was five doors down from theirs. Still, he led them there at lightning speed, and looked over both his shoulders before swiping his card key and shoving Pit inside. And since Ike's wrist was still attached to Pit by the unbreakable fluffy angel death grip, Ike got shoved inside as well.

"Now!" Link said, clapping his hands together. "I have got a _great_ way for you to find out all about little Miss Aran! And better yet, you won't even have to compromise your creepy creeper façade to do it, either!"

Pit put his hands on his hips and grinned like the maniac he was. "Well, that sounds pretty dandy and terrific to me!"

Link stepped across his room (it was full of crap, by the way. Not quite hoarder status, but getting there, you know? He had, like, old bombs piled on every end table, and crumbling maps stuffed into drawers, and splintered arrows littered all over the carpet, and you get the idea.) and tilted a frighteningly elaborate baroque painting of Tingle to one side. What had been hidden underneath was a tiny hole in the wall, probably just big enough for one grape to slide through, but that's assuming it's half rotten and has a lot of lubrication from the juices. That was an awkward sentence.

"What the hell is this?" Pit demanded in his outrage.

"Samus is my neighbor."

Pit stared at him.

"And this, uh, this hole? Yeah, it looks in on her room."

Pit stared at him.

Link wasn't really sure how much farther he could possibly roll with this explanation, but hey, he's nothing if not willing to give it a whirl. "So, uh, you know." I never said it would be a _good_ whirl.

"Alright, Link," Ike said finally. He was sitting down, and after examining an old bottle that looked as if it contained ten or twenty dead and shriveled up bee larvae he rolled it away from himself in disgust and continued, "I've got a question. Why did you punch a hole in your wall so you could spy on Samus in the first place?"

"Well it's not like I did it on _purpose_," Link said indignantly, turning a little red and flicking his ears back. "Me and Zelda got in a big fight, and she was shooting arrows at me, and she missed once—" he gestured at the peep hole, "—and yeah."

With utmost tact and subtlety, Pit asked, "Is that why this place looks like a Seven-Eleven restroom?"

"Huh?"

"Because you and Zelda were fighting?"

Link shifty-eyed. "Yes. Yes it is."

Ike had found a rotten fish that had almost become a part of the carpeting, and after he managed to pry it up, he shook it at Link and said, "Really."

Link looked as if he were ready to explain that that was a very _important_ rotten fish, maybe the very first one he had ever caught while wearing mismatching socks, but at that moment, they all heard a creaking as the neighbor's front door opened. Before anyone else could react, Pit had gasped and scrambled on top of Link's head and pushed his eye against the peep hole. Although his better judgment was kind of against the whole situation, Ike still didn't want to be left out of the festivities, so he came over and put his ear to the wall. Pit gasped again.

"What?" Link grunted from underneath of him, trembling from the strain of keeping his fat ass hoisted up in the air, "What's going on? What happened?"

"Shhhh!" Angel spittles speckled the face of Link. "She's on her cell phone! Be quiet!" Pit readjusted himself so his ear was pressed against the peephole instead.

Ike listened as hard as he could, but because of the sounds Link was making trying to hold Pit up, it was no game of Kirby. He heard a rustle of fabric that might have been Samus tossing down a backpack. Then she sighed.

"No, no, no…I still haven't told him yet." She had a nice voice, at least. It was deeper than most women's, and less musical, but it had a handsome quality to it all the same. Overhead, Pit was twitching in ecstasy.

Samus paused, apparently to let the other person talk. "Yeah, yeah, I know I said that I would do it today. But I just…I don't know. It's so much harder than you'd think."

"That's what she said," said Link. Pit kicked him and they almost toppled over, but Link managed to save it at the last minute.

"Hey now," Samus sounded a little angry, "don't you give me that. It's not like I _completely_ gave up. I still gave him a present!" Ike heard a quiet mumble as the other end asked her a question. "What did he do? Well, he freaked out! Happiness like you've never seen, I'm sure."

There was another pause. "Well..." Samus began, but then she stopped. "Well, I don't know. You know, it really might have been just because _I_ gave it to him that he was so happy. I mean, it was only—" She had said something here, but at that moment, Link's elbows finally buckled, and the sound of his chin hitting the carpet drowned out a few words. However, he managed to gather himself fast enough that they were able to catch the last part of the conversation: "…give it a shot. It's obvious he wants this. I mean, whatever, you can't treat somebody like this and then expect them _not_ to fall in love with you, you know what I'm saying? Right, well, if he's too shy to ask me out, that's fine. I'll just do it. _Yes_, tomorrow. And _yes_, this time I _promise _promise!"

"I'd say that you came to this game a tad late, Pit," Ike whispered at him. Pit couldn't quite muffle a little whimper of despair, and no sooner had it slipped from his mouth did Samus's speaking abruptly stop. The three of them tensed up and held their breaths. They waited, painfully, for the telltale beating of a fist against the wall, and maybe even some furious screaming if they were lucky, but none of that ever came.

Finally, Samus sighed. This time, she sounded annoyed. "Yes, yes, yes. I saw _him_ there, too," she snapped, and the three creepers realized with a flood of relief that her phone conversation was still going on. "They're never apart, are they? Honestly, though, I don't know _what_ you see in him. Such a nasty personality, and he's not even good-looking to boot!" There was a flurry of angry squabbles from the other end of the phone, and Samus sighed tiredly. "Alright, alright, I'm sorry. Darling, I'm just giving you my opinion." The other end snapped something else at her, and she added, "Fine, I'll keep them to myself from now on, whatever makes you happy."

An awkward silence drug out for a few moments. Samus, a little glumly, said, "Well, whatever. I'll see you tomorrow I guess. Good night, dear. Yes, good luck with your Brawl tomorrow, too. Mm-hm. Buh-bye."

There was a quiet click as she shut her phone, and she sighed again. Ike saw Pit out of the corner of his eye as he twisted around to look through the peephole again. "Damnit!" he hissed. "She just went in her bedroom and shut the door!" He slid down Link's back and scowled with his chin propped on top of his knees. Link and Ike exchanged glances.

After realizing that Ike certainly didn't give a shit, Link said gently, "You know Pit, maybe it's better this way. I mean, you hardly even knew her at all. She's going to go off and have a nice life now, and maybe now would be a good time for you to think about doing the same for yourself. It's really not healthy to obsess about someone and try to force yourself on them. Just take it easy, live your life, and if you're gonna fall in love, then just let it happen all by spontaneity, the way that it's supposed to."

Pit stared at him as if he had just suggested that they all get naked and play dodgeball with Hostess cupcakes. It was a look of astonishment and disgust, in other words. Pit's not into that sort of thing. At least, I'm pretty sure.

"No, Link," Pit said, straightening his back, narrowing his squirrely bastard hardcore obsessive creepy creeper Hostess cupcake angel eyes. "_You_ can go "take it easy" and just "live your life"! _Some_ of us here have much higher aspirations than living in a Seven-eleven restroom and occasionally getting struck in the eye with randomly lobbed blunt objects! _Some_ of us here want to experience the legendary joys and wonders of two souls connecting on the most profound level! _Some_ of us here don't need flea-bitten tree-raised fairy-boys to give them relationship advice, especially when said fairy-boys are getting arrows shot at them by their own girlfriends!"

"Now you see," Link said, a little crossly, "she's not my girlfriend. It's strictly professional. I'm getting awfully tired of everyone assuming that just because—"

Nobody was listening to him, least of all Pit, who was busily snapping his fingers over Ike's face. "Fatty!" he barked. "Get up! We're out of here! Link's a tool and we don't need his help _or_ his popcorn!"

Ike meanwhile was busy trying to will himself to stop breathing. His _medulla oblongata_ kept getting in the way of that fun endeavor, though, so in the end he had to drag himself to his feet and peer down into the murky depths of Pit's lovesick determination. "Pit," he said, slowly and articulately, "let me try and make this very clear. I…do…not…_care_. I do _not_ care. I am not going to help you. I have got my own problems to worry about, what with the death threats and the having to Brawl tomorrow. If you want to carry on in your own sad little dream world, well then what the hell ever. But I am _not_ going to help you. You're on your own. I'm not helping. I'm not. I swear to God I'm not going to help you. Really and truly, I'm not helping you. Now have you got this all figured out, or am I gonna have to say it again?"

Pit looked at him appraisingly. He chewed on his lip. "Sorry," he said gustily, "One more time?"

A little vein in Ike's neck twitched. "I'M NOT HELPING YOU!"

Pit clicked his tongue and shook his head. "You better watch yourself, Fatty. All that fried chicken ain't good for your blood pressure as it is. Of course, I've never _actually_ heard of anybody dying just from getting angry. But still, it begs the question. If you got your blood pressure, like, as high as it could possibly go, and then made yourself really, really, pissed off, do you think you'd actually blow up?"

Ike stared at him.

"Well, my point is that you shouldn't push it, Fatty. Don't give it a try, don't test those boundaries. Because I mean, that would really make one hell of a mess. I don't think we can fit any more stains on our ketchup-couch as it is."

Ike started walking away, but of course good old Pit was scrambling along, right there next to him, polluting up Ike's personal bubble just with his existence. "So anyway," Pit continued, "your high blood pressure's inspired me. I think I've got a pretty killer plan for how you can make Samus fall in love with me tomorrow."

Link cocked his head and twitched his ears as the sweet music pooled around him of Ike decking Pit out in the hallway.

* * *

TO BE CONTINUED...


	3. No items, Final Destination, Fox only

**Author's Note:** Imma apologize straight up for the degree of _bullshitting_ in this chapter. It goes somewhere, I promise! Part of why it took so long getting this chap out is because I kept going back and nervously trying to edit out some of the bullshitting to basically _no avail_. As a final concession to myself, I decided that the bullshitting wasn't that big of a deal, since it wasn't as long as I had initially thought, and at least it's pretty entertaining, but if you disagree, lemme know and maybe I'll try and whittle it down again.

And you know you like that epic battle sequence. Don't even try to deny.

Final chap will hopefully be up within the month, college permitting. And the plot thickens! Oh goodness, how could these shenanigans possibly cullminate?

Thanks again to all the readers and reviewers! You guys are awesome.

* * *

Eventually Ike and Pit had found their way back into their flat. Ike had really beat the tar out of Pit, so he got to sit down for a little while and watch _Let's Make a Deal_ in relative peace. I say "relative" because there were still some parts of the show that got drowned out with the sound of Pit trauma-retching into the kitchen sink. When you call a place paradise, however, you have to kiss it goodbye, because hey, the _Eagles_ never lied to us before, and Pit eventually managed to completely purge his stomach and come staggering into the living room, a bag of ice clapped over some of the more significant bruises on his face.

Trembling a little, he sat cross-legged on the floor and blankly stared at the television alongside Ike. Occasionally, he would glance backwards at Ike's face. It was kind of like throwing a sausage into the waters of the Amazon before you stick your foot in, to make sure that there aren't any piranhas or other foot-eating critters. Finally, at what was clearly the most important part of the show (some dude dressed up as a blender was about to find out if he had just won 5,000 dollars or a giant foam mousetrap), Pit decided that the time was nigh and he turned to Ike and blurted, "So do you wanna know what my plan for tomorrow is, or not!"

Ike had been all on pins and needles for the big reveal of what Mr. Blender's prize would be, because, let's face it, priorities. When Pit had blurted that at him, it kind of freaked him out, and he almost had another coronary, and he wheeled on Pit and screamed, "I already told you I don't care! God damnit, _go away_!" Then he turned back to the TV just in time to hear Wayne Brady going, "And that's all for tonight here on _Let's Make a Deal_!" or whatever the hell it is that he says at the end of _Let's Make a Deal_. I don't freaking know; _my_ priority is to write shitty fanfiction, not to watch goddamn _Let's Make a Deal_ all day like Ike.

Well anyway, Ike just kind of sat there in shock for a few moments after he realized that Pit had foiled his _Let's Make a Deal_-watching extravaganza. Pit was trying to puke again, but it wasn't really working because if you'll remember, he was already pretty much cleaned out. Ike grabbed him by the back of the scarf and dragged him backwards into their bedroom, shutting the door. And the fourteen-year-old yaoi fangirls of the world did squee.

Ike propped Pit up on his bed, and then he turned and began to pace the floor fervently, muttering to himself. Pit watched him for a little bit, but the back-and-forth motion made him a little dizzy and he started dry-heaving again. Yanking on his blue hair, Ike suddenly stopped and started yelling at Pit.

"_Why are you doing this to me_!" he cried, "Why _me_! Of all the people in this game, why did it have to be _me_ that you never leave alone? Why is it always _me_ that you come to when you've got some stupid _shit_ that you want to do? If I knew how I could get rid of you, believe me, I would, I would!" Now he was getting a little hysterical (A little?), and he had fallen onto his knees and grabbed hold of Pit's hands and started begging. "Can't you just leave me in peace! Why's it got to be this way, Pit? Everybody else is just here to have a little fun and make a little money! Why can't that be you, too? It's not that bad, you know, being normal! I do it! I did it all the time, before you came along! I-I could show you how!"

Pit stared at him.

"Alright! Alright!" Ike buried his face in his palms, sobbing quietly, but he wasn't fully ready to give up just yet. "How about this, huh? How about this instead? I'll help you! I'll help you _this_ time; but you've got to promise—_promise_—me that this is the last time! This is _it_! When this is over, and you're totally satisfied in your own crazy little way, I want you to leave me the hell alone! Okay! That sounds pretty fair to me! What do you think, Pit? Well, don't leave me hangin', tell me whatchu think 'a that!"

"Listen, Ike," Pit said with a sigh, heaving his skinny shoulders and rolling his eyes in a why-are-you-so-goddamn-stupid sort of way, "It's not even that big of a deal. If I had known you had wanted to hear it this badly, I woulda just spat it out on the spot, mmkay? But I gotta be frank with you, Fatty. You don't do a real stellar job of making your emotions clear. Back when we were in there, huh, watching that thing about the guy who was a blender, I _totally_ almost thought that you were more into the show for a minute than my idea, huh? You can't go lockin' people out, Fatty, I mean, this is your _life_."

Ike blinked in a stupid sort of way for a few minutes as he tried to figure out what had just happened, but slowly, as the glaze cracked, a great rage began to boil inside of him. He might have thought about making some kind of rebuttal to put Pit's delusional ass back in its rightful place of trauma-retching, but he was too pissed off to string together even this. But hey, that's alright, because Pit had more than enough vomit-inducing comments for the both of them. "If you're gonna be _this_ frantic about the whole ordeal, then I'm gonna set up a little compromise for it myself. I'll tell you my awesomesauce idea, but _only_ if you agree to be more _open_ about your _feelings_. You're not any more of a _man_ for keeping it all locked up inside, Fatty. That's the kind of thing that really puts a spike in your blood pressure, you know, and like I told you before, our couch can't hold another stain. Not even _one_."

At this point Ike had kind of gone catatonic, and he'd sat down on Pit's bed since he had been stupid enough to stick Pit on his own, and I mean, there's no way he's going to sit next to _Pit_, no matter who's bed he's on. I mean, Ike might be canonically gay and all, but still, standards.

Lucky for us, Pit interpreted this as a sign that he should bullshit onwards rather than correctly interpreting it as a sign that he should go play in traffic. Pit clapped his hands and started bopping up and down. The springs in Ike's bed were extra squeaky because they were starting to prematurely wear out from having to support his fat ass all the time.

"Okay Fatty, Fatty, Fatty," he said, throwing a 'Fatty' out there every time the bed squeaked. "You ready to hear my plan?"

Ike didn't say anything.

"It's really freakin' _A_, Fatty, and I'm not even kidding."

Ike's neck twitched.

"Alrighty then!" Pit clapped his hands again. "Imma tell you all about it now, Fatty!" Then he finally stopped bouncing and clenched his sweaty little angel mitts and bit his lower lip.

"Pit," Ike said after a few extremely awkward minutes had passed in silence, "You never _had_ a goddamn plan, did you?"

Pit gasped at this staggering and ridiculous and _obviously false _accusation. "I so freaking do have a plan, Fatty! If you would just open your mind to the _music_ and quit getting so bogged down in your little Fatty swamp of _hate_ and _disease_, maybe you could hear the little children singing their songs of double rainbows all the way _across the sky_!" Pit was so moved by himself that he had to wipe a little tear from his eye. "And you could hear them too, Fatty," he whispered, trying in vain to swallow back the _emotion_.

"_Will you quit bullshitting and tell me your plan already!_"

Pit was still all mellowed out from fighting Fatty's hate machine, so all he did was nod solemnly. He reached under Ike's bed and pulled out a tattered shoebox.

"Wait," Ike said, suddenly not at all catatonic or about to explode all over their ketchup-couch, "What is that? Why was it under _my_ bed?"

"They'd obviously suspect me, Fatty. You're not _clever_ enough for thieves to think to check under your bed for this kind of mind-blowing material. I'm just playing your strengths." He shrugged.

Ike snatched the box from him and flung the lid off. Inside were five smart bombs.

He went instantly white. "How did you get this?" he asked in a hissed whisper, because when he opened that box the room had obviously become bugged, and the CIA would be dropping in on them in about twelve minutes and within the day they would be stripped naked and chained to a wall in some central-American nation and be deprived of whatever trite commodities that seemed to make their miserable lives worth clutching to.

"I try and nick one every time I gotta Brawl somebody. It's actually pretty tricky, Fatty. You can't tap those thingies without em going off, and I stuffed one into my back pocket once, forgot it was there, and then went and had a jolly good sit. And they ask awkward enough questions in the emergency room, Fatty. "How did you manage to blow your left ass cheek off" is one that I had kinda hoped I'd never have to deal with."

"I can't just _walk onto the arena_ with five smart bombs, Pit! Master Hand is ten times smarter than all of us combined! Didn't you read the first chapter?"

Pit had, in fact, only skimmed the first chapter for the good parts, which is why it took him all of about twenty seconds. He chose to cleverly ignore Ike's brazen and unprecedented breaking of the fourth wall and continue on with the plot, because any more bullshitting at this point would be simply criminal.

"Oh contrare," Pit said, writing the French phrase in its phonetic English form because he was too lazy to go find a French-English dictionary and see how it was supposed to be spelled, "these aren't _really_ smart bombs, Fatty. I hollowed them out and flushed all the explosives down the toilet."

Ike stared at him.

"You remember last Sunday, when I had to call Mario up, and he was in here for, like, four and half hours, sweating and cussing, trying to unclog the toilet? Yeah, that was me," he said proudly, thumbing his chest.

"Anyway, I refilled the inside with a sleep toxin, so when you're fighting Samus, you can just throw one of these suckers at her and then drag her unconscious body back to our flat!"

Ike stared at him.

"She'll probably wake up two or three or five hours later. Then I'll take her to see _Despicable Me_. Then we'll probably get married."

Ike gingerly set the box of sleep bombs down next to him and then kneaded his brow. "Even if I completely disregard the whole second part of that, because it's just…. I mean, you realize an _audience_ watches these fights, don't you, Pit? Don't you think that if a couple hundred people saw me dragging Samus' unconscious body off of the battlefield that _somebody _might go "Hey, what's _that_ creeper doing?"?"

"Fatty," Pit said, waving his hands in a gesture of "woah, woah, woah," "I think you _totally_ underestimate the apathy levels around here."

Ike considered this entirely valid point for a few moments, and then replied, tentatively, "You know, in that case this _might_ actually work…"

"You're _damn straight_ it'll work," Pit grunted before falling back on Ike's bed unconscious.

So the next morning Ike got up and meandered out of his bedroom to find Pit squatting on the kitchen counter.

"Fatty!" he barked, and he hopped down and rushed him. "So-ho!" he said, beaming, "How'd ya sleep last night?"

Ike gave him a look straight out of his Fatty swamp of _hate_ and _disease_ and replied, "Well, considering that you were in my _bed_, I went and found a nice soft spot on the tile, and—"

"Yeah, yeah, whatever!" Pit was gnawing on his lower lip as he reached into his pockets and presented Ike with two of his homemade sleep bombs. "You remember the plan, right Fatty? That's really the important thing here, huh?"

"I remember your _plan_," Ike snapped, snatching the bombs from him and stuffing them into his tunic. It gave him the somewhat unsettling impression of having suddenly sprouted a pair of breasts overnight. Pit eyed these longingly for an awkward moment, but then he nodded at Ike, setting his jaw in a hardcore sort of way.

"I'll be rootin' for ya, Fatty."

Ike snorted. "I'm _sure_ you will be. You _do_ remember that I'll be fighting your…_girlfriend_, don't you?"

But Pit was just shaking his head. "Doesn't matter. Brethren before wenches, Fatty. _Brethren before wenches._" And with that, he snatched Ike by his pudgy wrist with his fluffy angel death grip and tore out of their flat.

As we've pretty well established by now, Pit is a flaming goddamn moron, and instead of taking Ike to the competitor's entrance where he could be briefed and give himself a little pep talk and generally put himself in the mindset for _victory_, Pit drug him all the way to the spectator's entrance, in the hope of catching the last of the first two matches. Ike responded by screaming and trying to wrench his arm out of Pit's fluffy angel death grip, but hey, it's a fluffy angel death grip after all, and his efforts were therefore futile.

The hallway where the spectators were lined was stuffy and hot. It was also packed with the hundred or so sweaty bodies of people whom comprised the freaky little group that Ike was a tad ashamed to have to admit that he was a part of. There was some kind of commotion in the middle of the mob, and Ike squinted towards it and saw, to his dismay, the figure of Link shouldering past K. Rool and Adeleine.

"Heya, how's it krackalackin?" Link asked, because he's pretty fly for a white guy.

"It's a little lackin' in the krackin', honestly," Pit replied, because he's pretty G too. "Did'jou catch the first match? Fatty was too busy trying to find a soft spot on the tile so that he could sleep like the girl he is, and we couldn't get here in time for it."

"Yeah, that one ended up not happening, actually," Link grumbled, scratching the back of his head. His eyes darted to the side, and they looked over to see Samus and Pikachu sitting next to each other, their backs to the wall, talking in low voices. Pit made a sound like a chipmunk being dropped down a garbage disposal.

"Master Hand must've forgotten that Toon Link died from being farted on by Wario. Pikachu won by default."

Ike shifted his feet in what he hoped was a suitably uncomfortable gesture of sympathy. Pit continued to gawk at Samus and Pikachu sharing their tender little human/rat moment. Link shrugged.

"Eh," he said, "It's really not that big of a deal, huh? I've probably forgotten that he was dead four or five times already. Hell, sometimes when he was _alive_ I would forget that he _wasn't_ dead. You come home and find him sitting on your couch, and you're all like, "Oh yeah, he still exists." But yeah, anyway, it's R.O.B. and Diddy Kong now."

Link glanced around again and leaned over to Pit. He nodded at Samus. "I think you should go and talk to her."

Pit had not blinked since he had seen Samus, and his eyes were starting to look like raisins. Link snapped him the heck out of it, though, and he scowled at him. "Damnit, tree-boy, _yesterday_ you were telling me that I need to freaking move on with my life! You need to man the freak up and pick a side! Team Awesome or Team Douchebag!"

Link flicked his ears back. "I'm not switching sides! I want you to go talk to Samus because I know that she'll shun you, and it'll give you a healthy, much-needed dose of soul-crushing!"

This made much more sense to Pit, and to honor Link's newfound sense-making, he decided to giddily follow this suggestion, and he merrily skipped over to where Samus and Pikachu were sitting on the floor. Pit also hadn't considered breaking the death grip he had on Ike's wrist yet, so whoopee for Fatty, he got to come too.

Pit skid to a stop in front of them, and they looked up, kind of nonplussed. "Hey Samus!" Pit said, twiddling his fingers at her and blushing a little bit. She didn't say anything, and for a minute he gawked and stumbled for something relevant to say. He's really not practiced in saying relevant things, if you hadn't noticed, so please take a moment to appreciate just how serious this challenge was. Suddenly he became aware of the sweaty hand he still had clamped to Ike, and he said, "I just wanted to wish you good luck in your Brawl against Fatty, here!"

Samus blinked. "Well. Thank you very much, Pit."

Pit was swooning and seemed to be in no state or condition to be standing, let alone holding a conversation with someone, so she turned to Ike instead. "So, Fat—ah, Ike, I mean. You feel ready for the fight?"

Ike was feeling a little weak in the knees himself, and it was taking everything he had in him not to vomit all over her, but he still somehow managed to eek out, "Oh, oh yeah."

She crossed her arms. "That's good. I'm really feeling up for a challenge." She looked down at Pikachu, smiling lovingly. "You were really disappointed that you didn't get a match today, weren't you Pikachu?"

Pikachu, however, seemed to have gone kind of rigor-mortis, staring at Ike and Pit. It's a little hard to describe the look he was giving them. It was kind of vapid, and also kind of drooling. Whatever thoughts or feelings might have been pulsing through his little Pika-brain were veiled perfectly behind the mask of herp-dee-derp emptiness. Ike was kind of freaked out, so he asked, "Does he always look like that?"

Samus seemed a little surprised, and she was about to say something, but at that moment a buzzer sounded, and everyone who had actually been watching the damn Brawl erupted into deafening cheers. Speakers mounted into the ceiling above them crackled with sudden life: "AND THAT'S THAT FOR R.O.B VS. DIDDY KONG. WHO COULD HAVE FREAKING PREDICTED THE END OF THAT ONE. ABSOLUTELY MIND BLOWING. I TOTALLY FEEL FOR ANYBODY WHO WASN'T PAYING ATTENTION TO THIS ONCE-IN-A-LIFETIME BRAWL. YOU STUPID BASTARDS.

"ANYWAY, SAMUS AND FATTY NEED TO GET THEIR ASSES DOWN HERE RIGHT FREAKING DOWN. THERE'S NO EXCUSE TO BE DICKING AROUND WITH THE SPECTATORS. COME AND DO YOUR JOBS, FREELOADERS."

"That was Master Hand," Link said like the extraordinarily useful person that he is.

Ike looked up at him, then looked back down towards Samus. In that space of time, however, she had already torn out of the hallway and off to the Brawler's dock.

He glared at Pit. "I've got to go. Let go of my wrist."

Pit's back was rigid and immobile. "I can't unclench my fingers, Fatty," he whispered, cross-eyed.

Ike kind of snarled, and then he lurched towards the exit, pulling Pit off of his feet with him.

The arenas, as important as they would seem, were really very unimpressive in real life. Pit and Ike stopped in front of a bland office door. Through the small pane of wire-latticed safety glass there was nothing visible in the complete darkness. Ike finally managed to pry Pit's fingers off of his wrist.

"Well," Pit was solemn as he clapped Ike on the shoulder, "I guess this is it, Fatty. I'm sure you'll tear it up out there, though. You don't give yourself half as much credit as you deserve." His eyes darted up and down the corridor before he tossed Ike a quick salute and scooted back to the spectator's hallway. Ike, a little off guard, was left wondering whether Pit had been sarcastic or not.

However, he was not given much time for musing. The Spartan door suddenly opened and Master Hand beckoned him inside. Beckoning was one of his specialties. As was opening doors. Sometimes it's just better to be a giant floating hand.

Ike stepped inside, his belly churning. Master Hand was staring at him.

"What?"

"WHY DO YOU HAVE TITS?"

Ike scoffed. "They're not _tits_, they're just _bombs_." He realized a moment later that hey, Master Hand wasn't really supposed to know that. But oh well, that's how it goes.

Master Hand snapped his fingers and held himself out, apparently gesturing for Ike to give him his boobies. Ike obliged without too much fuss. He's just that kind of girl. _So much for abducting Samus_, he thought, not feeling all that disappointed.

"YOU KNOW THE RULE CHANGES THIS SEASON. NO ITEMS. FINAL DESTINATION. FOX ONLY. SAMUS IS ALREADY OUT THERE WAITING FOR YOU. GO AND LOSE, FATTY."

Ike had been about to ask what the hell he meant by "Fox only," but Master Hand is very much intolerant of bullshitting, and he simply flicked him off onto the arena. He bounced and rolled for a while, eventually coming to a stop at Samus' feet. Half-dazed, he looked up at her and saw that she was holding two game controllers.

"Ike, would you like the good controller or the retard stick?"

"Huh?"

She rolled her eyes. "To fight with. Do you want the _good controller_," she shook her left hand, which held a Game Cube controller, "or do you want the _retard stick_?" she shook her right, which had a Wiimote.

When Ike continued to stare at her uncomprehendingly, she lost her patience and flung the retard stick at his head.

From the sidelines, they heard Master Hand booming. "ARE OUR CONTENDERS READY?" Samus shot him an OK sign. Ike looked ready to pass out. Master Hand seemed to accept the later as an affirmative because he continued, "IS OUR AUDIENCE READY?" There was a deafening wave of cheering from the hallway where the two of them had been a few minutes ago. Ike looked up, squinting at the white squares that were the observation windows and thought that he could just make out the tiny form of Pit, wings aflutter, pounding his fists against the glass. "THEN LET'S GET READY TO BRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWL!"

Samus nodded at a still-queasy Ike and leaned forward nonchalantly to turn the Wii on.

The spectators were suddenly quiet as the two of them carefully navigated to the character select. Ike had been about to choose himself, but Samus shot him a dirty look and so he settled on Fox as well. Ike leaned over to Samus and hissed, "_Why are we using a Wii?_"

She shrugged. "Master Hand thought you would die if you exerted yourself, and frankly Ike, I think he's probably right."

And here Ike had thought Master Hand didn't care.

In the time it took for Ike to mentally acknowledge that, Samus had already turned the items off and selected Final Destination.

"FIGHT!"

The two of them leaned in closer to their little ten –inch television, trying to squint past the gyrating white static lines that stretched across the screen so they could actually see what the hell their respective Foxes were doing. It was kind of hard. They each self-destructed a few times, and Ike realized about five minutes into it that he had been looking at the wrong one. And thus we discover that Samus and Ike are n00bs.

The spectators waited on pins and needles, with bated breaths and clenched fists. Someone murmured, "This is even _better_ than R.O.B vs. Diddy Kong!" Down below, Samus and Ike were gnawing desperately on their respective tongues, occasionally saying n00bish things like "Aw, shucks, I fell off again," or "What button do I push to punch you?"

Eventually Samus managed to figure out that the B button made Fox shoot his little laser gun, and she proceeded to spam this for the remainder of the match. Ike couldn't figure out how to jump or use his shield, so he just had to kind of stand there and take it. Until, that is, he realized that the laser blasts didn't cause him to recoil, and he walked over to Samus and began kicking her Fox avatar in the head. They exchanged kicks to the head for a solid twenty seconds until Ike got turned around and began kicking the air. Then Samus started shooting him again.

At this point, it all looked over for Ike. The crowd gasped. Link covered his mouth with his hands and Pit began pounding harder on the glass. "CURSE YOU, FATTY!" he wailed with all the might built up in his Pit-being. Tears welled in his squirrelly bastard angel eyes. "You just got so much fight in you, Fatty! This can't be the end! Don't you give up! DON'T YOU GIVE UP NOW, GODDAMN YOU!"

Samus was a solid spammer, and Ike knew, the sweat dripping off of his flabby face, that there was no way he could get around that endless stream of red lasers hurling towards his own doomed little Fox avatar. But hey, at least they still weren't making him recoil, so after much deliberation, he decided to carefully inch his Fox back over to Samus. Then he taunted.

A great "Oh-ho-ho, noooooooo he di-in't!" rose out of the crowd. Pit pumped his fists. "That's the Fatty I know and love!" he whooped, "Give her hell, Ike, like the bad-ass freaking Brawl master you are!"

Ike's Fox wandered off a cliff.

"Minor setbacks!" Pit screamed, but he was standing right next to Lt. Surge, who was getting mighty tired of the brouhaha, so he punched him in the head and Pit fell backwards, unconscious.

Ike re-formed back over the stage. Wiping his brow, he chanced a look up at the timer. Only thirty seconds left. Even after Ike had wandered off the cliff, Samus had not stopped shooting her red lasers. A searing little ball of fear and despondency began to cook in Ike's belly as he realized that Samus' n00bishness greatly outpaced his own.

But then, suddenly, he was struck with the fist of epiphany. Instead of simply dropping back onto the map and waiting for his post-death invincibility to wear off so he could begin taking laser damage again, what if…and oh, it was so farfetch'd (lol do ya get it? Because Pokémon.), but maybe, just maybe, he could go all out and pull off a more staggering maneuver.

Ike's Fox leapt into the air. He wasn't really sure how he'd managed to make it do that, and he got a little scared and kind of lost control, but it's okay, he saved it at the last minute. Ike landed on the very edge of the stage. Fox made a little gasping sound and flailed his arms and legs like he was going to fall off, but he didn't, because Ike's a badass and he knows what's what, mm-hm.

Samus was a little bit startled by this unforeseen and comparably un-n00bish development. Her Fox turned around five or six times. Then it slipped and tumbled ass over teakettle.

"Wow!" she said, "How'd I make it do that?"

Ike meanwhile, was sweating profusely, his shaking hand poised fervently over the retard stick's D-pad. His eyes darted from the screen to the controller. He bit his lip. Right would send him in the direction of safety, the direction of Samus, the direction of freaking manly ultimate victory of honor. Left would send him plummeting to his demise. Again. A bead of sweat rolled down through the channel that ran between his eye and nose.

Without even meaning to, his trembling fingers struck one of the arms of the D-pad. He gasped. The crowd went "Aaaaahhh!"

He had gone right.

Cheers flew up out of the spectator's hallway. Pit had since regained consciousness and managed to goad a couple people into cheering "Faaaa-tty! Faaaa-tty!"

Samus was really starting to lose her cool. She was still spamming the laser, but every few seconds she freaked out and turned around or randomly walked to one side. Her n00b powers were increasing. Ike feared for his life.

His hands were so sweaty by now that the retard stick was beginning to slip out of his grip. There were five seconds on the clock. Ike was desperately trying to remember what button was jump, when suddenly the controller fell from his hands and hit the floor.

It hit in just the right way to have him perform a smash attack and send Samus sailing off into the horizon.

"GAME!"

The roar from the crowd was so great that Ike couldn't hear it. He felt numb. Samus eventually set her good controller down, and head hung, switched the Wii off. She offered him her hand. As if in a dream, he shook it.

She clenched down on it and pulled him in closer to herself. "Listen," she said, and Ike was floored to hear the note of fear in her voice. He looked up at her face and saw that her eyes were still locked on the ground. She swallowed and bit her lip. "I wanted to ask you something. Please…ah, don't think it sounds too crazy…"

"YYYYEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAHH, FATT-TAY!"

Ike looked up. He couldn't help it. Pit had pushed himself against the window spread-eagle, and he moved his arms and legs all around like he was trying to make a snow-angel, except on the window glass, so it was more like a glass-angel, durr hurr. Ike thought suddenly about what Pit had wanted him to do with this fight all along, and about what Samus was trying to say right now. An astonishing realization came over him.

He turned back to her, mouth hanging open, and gestured up at the spectators. "This…this is about Pit, isn't it?"

Samus glanced up at him and flushed red. "I…well, I guess it is. Ike," she said, returning her gaze to her feet. "Please…could you and…ah, _Pit_…meet me tomorrow? By the lobby fountain? At four o'clock?"

He nodded, still not quite believing his ears. "Of course! Of course we'll be there." He looked down at his own feet. "I'm not too fond of the guy myself, Samus, but I think you deserve to know, at least, he's wanted this for a long time. And really badly." Ike looked back up, but Samus, too rattled by her confession to linger another moment, had already run off.


	4. Makin' some godforsaken bacon

**Author's Note: **Fun things! I totally thought this chap would be the last one, but a DRAMATIC RECESS was called for. Clearly! You'll know what I'm talking about. So it looks like you guys are going to be getting a chapter five some time in the future. Wowee!

AND THE PLOT, IT THICKENS FASTER THAN SAUSAGE GRAVY, DUN DUN DUNNNN.

(And again, thanks for your support! I'm diggin' it, cha.)

* * *

The next few hours were kind of eventful, what with the loud parties, and the drinking of the various exotic fruity beverages, and with the playing of the beer pong, and with the spiking of the punch, and with the pinning of the little paper tail to the butt of the little paper donkey. It was Fatty's manly victory party of course, and he had totally earned that sucker, but at the same time he was sort of in a coma from getting about twelve seconds of sleep the night before, and from being on the verge of cardiac arrest several times in the span of an hour, and as nice as it sounds, he really just wanted everybody to get the hell out. Although he was kind of glad for it when Mario and Donkey Kong started up some drunken fisticuffs and began knocking things over, because let's face it, that's always fun to watch.

Eventually Mr. Game & Watch managed to upturn an entire keg of two-dimensional ominous fluid, and everybody was really weirded out and started to leave. Ike received a couple more hardy slaps on the shoulder. Vacating brawlers winked at him knowingly, and some muttered, "Killer stuff, Ike; killer stuff!" Peach was the last to leave, grinning drunkenly and dragging a twitching and gasping Mr. Game & Watch behind her by his flat toe.

Ike slumped against the wall and mopped his face with his hand. Pit was still there, of course, because there's no such thing as paradise, remember, and he was farting around in the kitchen, picking up bowls and setting them down again an inch away from where they had been originally, and then after a moment of thoughtful consideration, carefully scooting them back, and then repeating. Ike had never seen him drunk before, and frankly he was a little surprised by just how tame it was.

Pit hiccupped as he spun a spoon about on the countertop. "Damn, Fatty," he muttered, eyes widening with sheer awe, "that was a _party_."

"Yes, Pit. That it most certainly was." Ike shifty-eyed and began to sidestep towards his bedroom.

"And I ain't talking no _Mario_ Party, either, Fatty." Pit scrunched his nose in a disapproving sort of way, rolling his eyes while the oversized spork he was trying to put away lolled in his grip. "For being king of Nintendo or whatever, that guy don't know shit about _shit_. And by shit I of course mean _awesome_."

"Well, you know how it goes, Pit. He's got his career to think about and all that. If _I_ was king of Nintendo, I don't think I'd be eager to throw it away on jungle juice and glow sticks either."

Pit snorted and teetered dangerously. "Yeah, well, you ain't king of Nintendo now, are ya?" He paused for a moment and considered this. "But after that crap on the arena, _damn_ Fatty you should be!"

He beamed, and for a moment Ike thought he was about to laud him some more. Ike actually stopped inching away from him for a moment, just in case. His ego is just like that. You know how it is. But then Pit began gnawing on his lower lip and looked on the verge of tears and Ike suddenly wished that there were about twelve feet of concrete between the two of them.

"Uh, what's the matter, Pit?" Ike was trying to sound as comforting as possible while at the same time stepping backwards and glancing around like a coyote desperate for an escape route.

He sniffed loudly and grabbed at a bottle of vodka. "Why didn't Samus show up to the party?"

Ike blindly stepped backwards and wound up with a bottle cap embedded in his heel. "She's probably just still smarting. You know, from her _immaculate defeat_."

Pit wiped his nose along his wrist-guards, sloshing a great deal of vodka onto the floor in the process. "No, no, no, no, no…. She just doesn't like me." Ike opened his mouth, but he shushed him immediately, pointing his vodka bottle at him like he was freaking Ron Weasley getting ready to alohamora. "And don't you try and say that she does! Stupid bastard fairy tree hippie boy Link was right! She totally freaking blew me off, Ike, and I can put on a brave face for _you_ maybe, but now that I'm alone and the only one around is _you_, I just gotta be honest about myself. This ain't workin. It's just not goin' down alright. You know what I'm saying, Fat-tacular?"

"Pit—"

"No n-n-no, no," Pit accidentally whacked himself in the head with his vodka bottle because he was swinging it so violently. After blinking his eyes a few times, he continued. "It's real rough, Fatty, but I gotta face facts. I dunno what I'm gonna do without Samus in my life, but if she don't want me, she don't want me, and there's nothing I can do about it! I oughta just go curl up in my room before I make a fool out of myself." It was around here that he noticed he was pouring vodka on his pants. Pit seemed only faintly surprised by this development.

Ike had, by this point, bravely come up and taken him by the shoulders. For added drama, he decided to shake violently, but that turned out to maybe not be such a killer idea, because Pit wound up getting dizzy and vomiting. I'm not really sure why there's been so much vomiting in this story thus far. Maybe they're all bulimic.

Pit wiped his chin off and handed Ike a towel, who snatched it from him with narrowed eyes and snarled, "Samus _does_ like you, although frankly I can't imagine _why_. Maybe she has a fetish for mental instability. My point is that you got damn lucky, you piece of shit."

Pit's mouth hung open and he stared at him for a few minutes, eyes glazing over. Ike was fast approaching the point where he was more uncomfortable than pissed off when Pit finally shook himself and said, "Sorry 'bout that, Fatty. I totally just spaced there."

Ike stared at him.

Pit scratched his head. "So what were we talking about?" Before Ike could answer, though, Pit was distracted by something clearly more questionable and he interrupted. "And why are you covered in vomit?"

"I'm going to bed!" Ike was already peeling off his stinking tunic as he walked away and dropping it like the most chunky and fish-scented nuclear fallout. Pit was about to come to bed as well, but he slipped in some of the ominous fluid that Mr. Game & Watch had spilled and he slapped his face into the wall. After he considered his predicament for a moment, he decided that that was really close enough, and he proceeded to pass out.

* * *

Ike woke up the following morning to find Pit squatting on his chest and holding a meat cleaver.

He said a lot of naughty things and had a few full-body spasms and shoved Pit onto the floor and clamored up onto his tip-toes and bunched the covers under his chin and generally freaked like the little pussy that he is. All the while Pit just kinda chilled where he had hit the floor and watched with a level of interest most people reserve only for watching _Keeping up with the Kardashians_ at three am on YouTube.

Ike never actually calmed down; he just had a partial blockage in one of his crustier arteries that prevented his blood from pumping so fast, and eventually he slumped back down against his headboard, a look of "blehhh" written across his features. Pit beamed.

"Morning, Fatty!" he said brightly, still brandishing his gleaming butcher's knife. He reached into the neck of his tunic and pulled out a folded piece of paper. "Looky looky what I found!"

Once the blood started to return to Ike's brain, he was able to process what was going on well enough to spit out, "You seem _awful_ damn chipper this morning."

Pit shrugged and said lackadaisically, "Oh, and how the world turns so fast and smoothly, Fattykins, and how it holds us all in its sway!" He swooned then, all mellowed out and what not.

"Alright, Pit, the party wasn't _that_ wild. What the hell is wrong with you?"

He wiggled the note at Ike, humming deeply and smiling broadly. Ike snatched it from his as quickly as he could. It was all like:

_Ike,_

_I know you sommbitches all got wasted last night. I could hear you all the freaking way down here, loud as shit up til, what, 3 am? The hell is wrong with you? _

_Anyway, I figured that since Wario was there that the punch got roofied, and you prolly don't remember anything that happened yesterday, so I wrote this up for you and slid it under your door to help jog your drooling beer-brain. You and Pit are supposed to come and meet me by the lobby fountain at 4:00. If you're still too messed up, wellp, I dunno. But you had better freaking be there. I mean it. I mean _seriously_. _

_Samus_

When he finished reading, Ike realized that Pit had crawled onto his bedsheets and was snuggling him. "She loves me, Fatty," he whispered, and Ike could feel his awkward little wiry angel body squirming in sheer glee. It was a feeling that he wanted very ardently to never remember, but the sense of violation was just so strong that it was burned into him, as bright and as clear as the moment he lived it.

"I don't get why you're so excited." Ike scooted carefully away from him, but Pit just followed. "She spent half the note swearing at you and calling you a sommbitch."

"No, no, Fatty! She spent half of it swearing at _you_. I'm mentioned only in passing, like a wispy, lingering ghost of desire, hovering mysteriously between lines of type." He exhaled longingly. "She's a real romantic, Ike. Such a fine specimen of love penmanship could not be wrought by mortal hand."

"You're an idiot." Ike considered that for a moment and then asked, "And what are you doing with that knife?"

Pit shifty-eyed. "_Knifing_ things. I don't know. Why do you always have to get all up in my thang, Fatty? Do I tell _you_ how to live?"

"Are you going to knife _me_, Pit? That's all I'm really trying to get at in this equation right now."

Pit was getting a little tired of Fatty's prying brouhaha, but like the hero he is he stoically and dutifully honored his roommate's outrageous request for him to unveil his personal doings. "I was knifing a ham hock, Fatty. I was makin' bacon. As a present. For _Samus_. I know _you_ don't know how the hell to treat a woman, Fatty, but I for one can respect them enough as _individuals_ to know that what they really want is to be given greasy strips of freshly slaughtered animal fat. I know we can't all be splendid romantics, Fatty, but sweet freaking Christ, it's like you don't even _try_."

Ike stared at him. Pit usually ignored these looks of scandal, as they were a pretty regular thing, but this time he had a feeling he knew what Ike was scandalized about, so he added reassuringly, "Don't worry, Ike, some of the bacon is for _us_."

* * *

When four o'clock was starting to get close to rolling around Pit ran out into the hallway, wings asunder, a box of bacon under one arm for his woman, and trusty ol' Fatty's wrist clenched in his free sweaty angel death mitt. Ike hadn't been quite sure what he was expecting when this all started goin' down, but Pit had actually put a respectable effort into cleaning himself up. I say "respectable effort" rather than "by gum, that gent was dapper" because, let's face it, halitosis. The guy just vomits entirely too much.

He had combed his hair, which is a big deal, okay, he got too excited and a few bits of scalp came up too, but we won't talk about that. He'd starched his wings, too, trying to make the feathers look sharper and more _manly_, although all that accomplished was getting them stiffly pinned in a gesture of eternal surprise. Pit had wanted to wear his svelte black toga as well, but Ike had managed to talk him out of that, citing that fanfiction usually wrote black toga Pit as a sex-crazed demonic sociopath, and that just really is not the kind of first impression you wanna make, you know what I'm saying?

Even though it was four in the afternoon, everybody was still asleep. It had a little to do with Ike's manly victory party the night before, but mostly it was just because they were all lazy bastards.

Pit was nervous as hell, and halfway between steps he kept freezing up and Fatty would have to get behind him and shove to make sure he kept walking. Not that any of you should mistakenly believe that Ike has any interest whatsoever in Pit's godforsaken bacon-addled love life. It was just that Samus had been pretty hardcore in her insistence that they be there on time, and let's face it, she scared the sweet shit out of him.

Eventually they reached it. The lobby. The fountain cast an elegant frosted veil of vapor water that hung about that place. Towering ferns waved their graceful fronds in the subtle currents of air that mixed when the thundering water kissed it. And there on the stone ledge, a soft vignette silhouetting her timeless beauty, sat Samus Aran. And she was mining for boogers.

Ike heard a clatter and turned to see that Pit had dropped all of his bacon. He was trembling and wringing his scarf in his hands, his eyes like saucers. Ike heaved a sigh, bent down to retrieve the errant bacon and then shoved it back into Pit's hands. "You didn't have any problems talking to her yesterday," he grunted.

Pit was aghast. "Of course not! Yesterday I thought she hated me!"

Ike only rolled his eyes and clenched his wrist in his sweaty fat-ass _Let's Make a Deal_-watching mercenary death grip and drug him over to Samus.

As soon as she looked up at them, Pit stuck his box of bacon out and shouted "HI SAMUS, I GOT YOU SOMETHING."

For a while she just sort of sat there and stared at him appraisingly, but eventually she took Pit's package (not THAT package you nasty little monkeys) and opened it up. Ike hadn't realized before that Pit had stuck more stuff in there than bacon; Samus took out a socket wrench, and a little flash light ma bobber, and a jar of car polish, and then all the bacon was on the bottom, just chilling, kind of like that plastic filler Easter grass that your chocolate bunny snuggles in. Samus asked one of the most admittedly sane questions that Ike had heard in a while: "What the hell is this?"

"I got you some things," Pit repeated. He seemed to have calmed down a little bit now that Samus was looking at her presents instead of looking at him. Ike was a little impressed with how well that happened to work out, and for a split second he wondered if Pit had actually planned it that way. "It's just, you know," he continued, chuckling awkwardly, "you don't really strike me as a _girly_ girl, and I thought, maybe, you might want something practical as opposed to flowers and ribbons?"

Samus was furrowing her brow at the car polish.

"It's for your power suit," Pit said quickly, grinning and nodding.

"And the…ah, _bacon_?"

Pit shrugged. "Well who doesn't like _bacon_?"

She considered that for a moment and eventually titled her head and shrugged her shoulders in an expression of "Eh, makes sense." She set the box down next to her carefully. "Ah, you know, Pit—"

"I—well, you're gonna probably think I'm kinda stupid saying this, but," Pit stammered, shifting his feet. He knotted his fingers behind his back. "I've been thinking, huh, of all the stuff we could do? I really wanted to take you to see _Despicable Me_, but the damn fic author took too long getting this chapter up, and I don't think it's even in theaters anymore. We could always rent the DVD I guess, but it's just not as magical. Maybe we could go roller skating, though? I'll bet you're good at roller skating, what with your reflexes and all that. Mine kinda suck, I always end up tripping over stuff. Usually children."

"Pit—"

"Or—I dunno—Have you ever been to the park in the winter? The ducks and geese stay there all year because people feed 'em and all that, and they're so pretty, sitting out on the ice-covered lake. And sometimes they run around and slide into each other, or one'll get his head frozen to the pavement, and you know, that's always pretty cool, and—"

"_Pit_!" Samus barked, and he stopped abruptly. "That's not why I wanted you to come today."

"I…what?"

"I don't want to go out with you!"

Pit opened his mouth, floundered for the words for a moment, and then shut it again in disgrace. He bit his lip and hung his head. Ike (who was just kinda chillin on the sidelines and watching all this merry faggotry unfold) had never seen him look so profoundly devastated. But a moment later he had straightened himself, defiance glistening in his eyes. "Why not?"

Samus looked surprised. "Well, we're just not right for each other."

"Not _right_ for each other!" Pit boomed, "We've got more in common than two games from the same generation of Pokémon!"

Samus seemed a little taken aback, but she didn't say anything, probably from that taken abackness that I was talking about. Pit saw this as an invitation to elaborate, and elaborate he did.

"We both like projectile weapons!"

Samus snorted. "I have my pick of the most sophisticated long-range weaponry in the universe. You have arrows. _Girly_ ones."

Pit was in a huff. "They're not _girly_-arrows, they're _manly_-girly-arrows! And anyway, they could tear you in half without even touching you _or_ your stupid _universe_."

"So your arrows aren't touching the universe, huh."

"Well," Pit shrugged, blushing, "I guess they are right _now_. But you should see them when they're _angry_."

"Whatever, Pit," Samus grumbled, but he was already snapping his fingers at her.

"What about _dungeons_?"

"Well, what about them?"

"You and I are both _pro_ at navigating dungeons! Link doesn't have anything on you or me, huh? He gets to go back into his nice, wide-open overworld, but oh no, not you and I! We stay in those dark, cramped shadows! We do it, we tough it out like the heroes we are!"

Samus didn't rebut this, and although she was still frowning, she had her head tilted and was listening with interest.

"I mean," Pit admitted, "Sure, you've got it certainly a lot tougher than _I _ever did. That's some gritty stuff they put you through, Samus. The rest of us are all off, whatever, driving go-karts on rainbows or chillin with fairies, or I don't freaking know, taking a piss off bubblegum mountain, and then there you are, waist-deep in who-the-hell-knows, fighting some slimy disembodied brain who's taking over some landfill of a planet."

"That's my game you're talking about," Samus snapped, bristling. Pit put his hands up in submission.

"No, no, no, no! That wasn't my point! I was just trying to say that you're really brave and really strong to be willing to put yourself through all that! And Samus, nobody ever hears you complaining! For that alone I respect you more than anybody else in this place! I mean, Fatty over here never shuts the hell up, and it's just stupid shit about how he's hungry for chicken!"

"Hey! That's not stupid!"

Pit was waiting for Samus to say something to him, but she just stood with her arms crossed. Finally she said, "Well?"

"What?"

"What else have we got?"

Pit drummed his fingers against his chest for a moment, and then he thoughtfully said, "There's always the games themselves."

"The games themselves," Samus repeated, flat. "Pit, you haven't had a freaking game in almost twenty _years_! Do you even understand the _words_ that are dribbling out of your own mouth?"

"I'm not talking about _that_, I'm talking about way back; _waaaay_ back!" He grinned, egging her on.

Samus considered it for a moment. "In the beginning, Yamauchi wanted to sell playing cards, and—"

"No, not _that_ far back! Jesus Christ!" Pit was annoyed. "I'm talkin first Metroid! _That_ era! Whatchu remember, huh, what made it special?"

She stared at him vacantly, and he was already getting impatient so he just blurted, "Kid Icarus came out then, too! Only months later!"

"So what?"

"_So what_!" He gawked, "Those games were both _huge_ deals! And on the same engine and everything! That never happens, Samus. Made by the same guy, even! You remember ol' Gunpei Yokoi, right?"

Samus burst into tears.

Pit looked like he'd been punched in the stomach. He was desperately blathering all manner of apology and explanation, "No—I just—wait—I didn't" and eventually just had to force himself not to think of her for a minute just so he could get his bit out.

"No, no, Samus please! My point was that when he produced Metroid, it was one of the most well-made, innovative games anyone had ever seen. An instant classic, a job infinitely well done! I just think it's so amazing you're a part of it. And-and, when he made Kid Icarus later, you know what they said about it, right? A combination of Mario, Zelda, and yup, even Metroid, too! Just think, Samus, if it hadn't been for you, I might never have even existed at all!"

For awhile it had looked like she might have been calming down, but after that last comment she started crying even louder than before.

Pit looked about to start another frantic explanation, but Ike had come up and put a hand on his shoulder, shaking his head slowly.

"I think you've done quite enough here, Pit."

He looked desperately back up at Samus, who was still hiding her face in her upturned palms, and he dropped his chin against his chest, finally defeated. "You're right, Ike. We…we should just go."

"No!"

The two of them looked up, surprised, at Samus who was fumbling with a tissue and frantically waving for them to come back. "Ike! I never got to say!" She had scrambled to her feet and jogged up to them, dabbing at her eyes, embarrassed. "Oh, damn you, Pit!" she snapped, flinging the tissue to the floor, "You've ruined everything! Ike! I…I think I love you."


	5. Jack ByGum Diddly

**Author's Note:** Well monkeys, it's story time.

So. Uh. Basically. I had been toying with the idea of illustrating this goddamn crackdrabble. Well, not really "toying" since I made the illustrations and they are on the internet. However, after much swearing and screaming and banging my forehead against the keyboard, I've come to the unpleasant conclusion that _FFN does not support images son of a bitch_.

The illustrations? If you care, they are chilling yonder, and in thus order. DO NOT add a "www"; and for every (dot) add an actual "."

img695(dot)imageshack(dot)us/img695/1378/fk002(dot)jpg  
_"Ike's face went white."  
..._  
img691(dot)imageshack(dot)us/img691/4976/fk003(dot)jpg  
_"he would have blissfully continued strangling his idiot roommate except that it was about then he noticed someone was looming over and watching him"  
..._  
img718(dot)imageshack(dot)us/img718/6499/fk005(dot)jpg  
_"That's true, Ike. He _did_ make the popcorn."_

img228(dot)imageshack(dot)us/img228/9672/fk001(dot)jpg  
_"It's a little hard to describe the look he was giving them. It was kind of vapid, and also kind of drooling."  
..._  
img543(dot)imageshack(dot)us/img543/9783/fk006(dot)jpg  
_"And thus we discover that Samus and Ike are n00bs."  
..._  
img88(dot)imageshack(dot)us/img88/8838/fk004(dot)jpg  
_"Ike woke up the following morning to find Pit squatting on his chest and holding a meat cleaver."  
..._  
img822(dot)imageshack(dot)us/img822/2449/fk007(dot)jpg  
_"I say "respectable effort" rather than "by gum, that gent was dapper" because, let's face it, halitosis."  
..._

There's one more picture too, but it goes with this chapter and in the interest of not _spoiling_ anything, I'm sticking it at the end.

And I'm sorry about the links. FFN isn't good at those, either.

OH GOODNESS THE EPIC CONCLUSION LET IT COMMENCE DUN DUN DUN. Thanks again to everybody who reads and reviews. Makes my freaking day every time. And a special thanks to ClumsyHeart for tactfully telling me that I needed to blasted update already. _Somebody had to do it, cha. _

* * *

To this outburst Ike responded by blinking unevenly and saying something to the effect of "Mmmblehem?"

Samus had dropped her red face and was nervously twisting her fingers behind her back. "I-I don't know what it is," she said, voice breaking, "But I, I just, I, I can't get you out of my head! Every time I try and think of something else or do something else or talk to somebody else, my thoughts just come swooping right back over the lake of my subconscious, opening the talons of discovery and clamping down on the little jumping Ike-mouthed-bass, only to fly them back up to the nest of contemplation on the cliffs of the psyche, where they tear into every succulent morsel and swallow it down to let it digest slowly and thoughtfully."

This disgustingly elaborate extended metaphor was met with a glazed look from Ike, but Pit elbowed him in the side and waggled his eyebrows. "I told you she was a poet, heh?" But then the stupid bastard remembered that she was talking about Ike and he got all pissed off.

"Wait a minute," he began, grandly, puffing his chest out and opening his eyes and wings as far as they would go. His hackles rose and all the veiny tings that were chilling on his neck and face started bugging out all over the damn place. Then he looked at Ike. Then Ike pissed himself.

"You _stole_ her from me!" Squawking, he began jabbing his bony little goddamn angel finger into Ike's flabby chest. "You _knew_ that I loved her more than anything else in this crummy world, and you took her from me anyway." His lip started quivering and then a bunch of manly tears gathered like suicide jumpers on the lids of his eyes. "I thought we were _friends_, Fatty!"

"Pit," said Ike, "We are _not_ friends."

This, of course, was an idea that Ike had been trying to pound into his concrete goddamn angel skull for some unfathomable time now, so he said it without thinking, kind of like an instinct sort of deal, you know, like how a cow baby automatically knows that the milk lives in that slimy pink thing dangling off of its mother's stomach.

The problem with this fancy little instinct of Ike's was that it didn't give him time to consider the ramifications of the statement. By doing such a thorough job of crushing Pit's final attempt to extend a single quivering hopeful fingertip, he had at the same time seemed to validate what the little bastard had been saying about him stealing Samus and all that. Which was bad. She scared the sweet shit out of him. And now she thought he loved her back.

Also, Pit thought he was a little she-man pants-shitting mama's boy. Considering his compromised emotional state; and the fact that he was still carrying his handy dandy bacon knife; that was probably the bigger bummer.

Ike felt a sudden woosh of air about a quarter of an inch from his skull and watched blankly as the thrown knife embedded itself about three inches into the opposing wall.

"Goddamnit, Fatty!" Pit roared, tears streaming down his face, "Why couldn't you'a leaned to the left a little bit? I thought we were _friends_, Fatty!"

Ike managed to stop himself in time from reminding Pit that they weren't friends again, but hey, it might not have been that big of a deal after all, because about a twelfth of a second later, Samus came over and slugged him.

Her voice rumbled like a volcano with dysentery that was about to spew some saucy red Italian lava. "How _DARE_ you!" Pit apparently still didn't have the muster to get up and defend himself against the spicy blonde bounty huntress who had just torn his heart asunder, so he just kind of lay on the floor and let her beat the living shit out of him. In between groin kicks, she rage-elaborated: "We just…found out…we _love_…each other…and here you come…throwing a freaking _knife_…at his head! The hell…are you even…_thinking_!" She paused for a moment to casually glance at the knife that was still stuck in the wall and then continued. "And it's even…the one…that I _gave_…to him!"

Whimpering and clutching at the sad bruised remnants of his balls sac, Pit apparently decided that if Samus was gonna beat the living hell out of him, then she had better at least get her shit straight. "You didn't _give_ it to him. It's the one that came stuck in his death-threat bomb. You wouldn't have given it to him unless you had wanted him to _die_. You know, kind of like how I do now."

For a moment Samus just stared at the crumpled angel uncomprehendingly, but then, after adding a final kick for good measure, she turned to Ike. "Ike, sweetie," she said, her voice like honey, "What's this ass hole talking about?"

Ike had been making pretty killer headway as he attempted to slide away without her noticing, but by gum, we just can't ever get the things we want, can we? It was with a sigh that he walked thirty yards back across the room to impatiently explain to her. "It wasn't actually a bomb, it was a pumpkin, he's just an idiot. But I found this pumpkin on my doormat yesterday, and it had my name on it, and a knife stuck in it, and somebody's trying to _kill me_."

Samus was chuckling, and then Ike asked her what was so goddamn funny, and then she started laughing full-on. DOUBLE RAINBOW ALL THE WAY. Then she started kicking Pit again, all the while laughing harder. "Oh, Ikey," she said in a singsong sort of way, "That wasn't a _death threat_, you _silly_. I'm the one who left you that pumpkin! It was a present. Because pumpkins are a kind of food. And I know you like food."

Ike stared at her. "Then why was my name written on it like some kind of macabre ransom note?"

"That was so Pit wouldn't steal it. It wasn't _his_ love pumpkin. I have to make these things clear, you know."

Ike stared at her. "Then why did you stab it with a cleaver?"

She shrugged. "For cleavage."

Pit began giggling like the mature individual he was, so Samus kicked him again.

Ike began rubbing his head, and then Samus began to gush. "Oh, Ikey, I just _knew_ everything would work out! You have no _idea_ how long I've been planning this whole thing! I'm so glad you liked your pumpkin. And I'm so glad we've hit it off so well today!" She clutched at his hands and he yanked them out of her grip, but she didn't seem much put off. "Now we can go off! The world is our oyster, young Ikeling, a veritable trove of experience and wonder, ripe for our shucking!"

"_Poetry_," Pit said again in a garbled, missing-a-couple-of-teeth-now sort of way.

Ike stopped a stuck a hand out like a Jedi doing a Force-push. "I'm gay," he said flatly.

Samus only chuckled. "Oh, Ikely," she said, rolling her eyes and grinning broadly, "I know they all write the fanfiction that way, but that doesn't mean you actually have to _be_ that way. It's really got nothing to do with anything."

"No," he said shortly, "I mean _really_."

For awhile, Samus just stared at him. Hesitantly she asked, "You…you mean you're _bi_, right?"

"_No_! I'm _gay_!"

Samus just gnawed on her lower lip and wrung her hands for a few moments, apparently thinking fervently. "Well," she said at last, in a huff, shaking her head and snatching Ike's hand again, "I'm sure we can work a way around it. When two people love each other _this_ much, there's just no stopping. You know what I'm saying."

Ike yanked his hand out of her grip again and squabbled backwards. "Okay listen," he said desperately, "I _don't_ like you. I _don't_ want to go out with you."

A look of the most profound astonishment crossed Samus' face, and Pit started giggling until she nutted him again. "You don't…_want_ to? But…why not? It's not _me,_ is it?"

"Well, yeah, pretty much," Ike grumbled, but she ignored him.

"It's your _mother, _isn't it!" Her voice had changed into a tone of disgust and rage. "She _always_ hated me, Ike! From the very beginning! It's like I could never do anything right by her! It's not fair!"

"My mother's _dead_, you twat," Ike snapped at her, "And you never met her, anyway. What the hell are you even going on about?"

But Samus was sobbing again, slumping dramatically down onto her knees with her hands clutching at her collar. "It _always_ comes back to this, doesn't it! You just don't wanna deal with the _commitment_, Ike! Well just because you never think about it doesn't mean that I don't need some _commitment_ in my life!

She began slinking towards him, having suddenly shifted into a mood of eroticism. "I need to _know_ that you love me," she purred, "I want you to _show_ me how much you love me. I wanna _feel_ it, Ikey. Oh, let me _feel_ it."

"Oh good Lord," said Ike as he tried to scramble backwards, but he wasn't fast enough and she caught him by the shoulders. She stood and planted the wettest, most passionate kiss on his mouth that he had ever experienced. Which, granted, isn't saying much, since Fatty isn't exactly a shining star of romance. But still, for what it's worth.

He realized suddenly that she had pushed him up into a wall. "_Samus,_" he crowed, "Sam, don't do _this_…"

She just wagged her eyebrows and licked her lips. And then Fatty began to panic.

He started swatting at her. "Come on; I already said I don't feel this way about you…I mean, ah—Samus, oh God, put that back on—I just…ah, no, no, _no_, man just let me…. Why are you _doing this_! Samus, Jesus, we don't even KNOW each other!"

That finally made her pause. "But after all we've been through? How could we not even know each other?" She narrowed her eyes. "Unless you've been leading a _double_-life!" She stepped back and sized him up. "You're not gay, are you?"

He stared at her.

She rubbed her chin, apparently deep in musing. "Well," she admitted, "I hadn't _thought_ so, but for some reason there the idea just totally popped into my head. Dunno where it came from. Feel free to disregard it."

"Holy shit," Ike said slowly. His eyes panned from the inanely contemplative Samus to the quivering pile of Pit and back again. "You're as _crazy_ as _he_ is!" The weight of this statement collapsed onto Ike as he suddenly realized a truth he would have never thought possible. "YOU TWO ARE **PERFECT** FOR EACH OTHER!"

Samus' feelings of scandal had apparently evaporated, as she had slunk over and plunked her fingertip off the end of Ike's nose. "You and I, Ike? Of _course_ we're perfect for each other! But how _sweet_ of you to bring it up!" She turned back to Pit, grinning toothily. "Isn't he such a romantic?"

This was the luckiest thing Samus could possibly have said. It was _just_ disgusting enough for Pit to muster one last good projectile vomit, and that hit her square in the chest. And Samus wasn't quite batshit crazy enough, as it happened, to be completely unfazed.

"_Come on_!" Ike roared, leaping out of her fumbling, bile-scented grip and snatching Pit up by his wrist.

Samus was making some mucho fun squawking sounds and wiping desperately at her eyes as she staggered about like an inebriated toddler. The whole effect was really kind of amusing, and despite themselves, for a moment Pit and Ike stopped dead in their tracks to point and merrily guffaw. Despite this clearly professional espionage, she somehow realized what was going on anyway and began channeling her blind staggering into a motion more sort of towards them, although it wasn't obvious and you kind of had to squint. Still, scary shit.

Pit and Fatty tore out of that dayum place so fast that they threw the rotation of the Earth off-kilter and its axis tilted a couple of degrees and the resultant increase in direct sunlight to the equator dried up the whole dayum Pacific Ocean. But that's more like a "couple-days-from-now" sort of problem than a "holy-shit-we-all-gonna-die" sort of problem, so let's not go into any more detail. Oh wait, f*ck, they're in Japan, that's totally a "holy-shit-we-all-gonna-die" problem, not a "couple-days-from-now" problem. But I really hadn't wanted this fic to go in the direction of post-apocalyptic-the-Pacific-Ocean-dried-up-now-what-the-hell, so I guess just for the sake of simplicity we'll say that Antarctica melted and sloshed in to take the place of the errant Pacific Ocean. The water from the Pacific Ocean just kind of left the planet. Except Wikipedia says that's not how evaporation works, so maybe (again, just for the sake of simplicity) we'll say that the Pacific Ocean water re-condensed over the South Pole and froze into a new Antarctica. So we broke even.

Well, by this time Pit and Ike had ran back to their flat and slammed the door shut and collapsed, chests heaving, onto the carpet. After awhile Ike got the muster to look up, watery-eyed, at Pit.

"Kiddo, if it's any consolation, she was a crazy, crazy bitch."

"Your _face_ is a crazy bitch," Pit mumbled, and skulking, he got up, took three steps, and flopped back down on the couch. Except he missed and landed on the floor again. And not a single fuck was given.

* * *

Well, Pit just sort of emoed out on the living room carpet for the next seven hours and didn't do jack by-gum diddly. And when I say "didn't do jack by-gum diddly," I mean it with the most staunch, bureaucratic seriousness that is humanly possible. He didn't twitch, sigh, blink, breathe, or pump blood. But this is fanfiction and biology is for twats, so don't you silly little monkeys worry; Pit was still very much alive. Because I _say_ so, _that's_ why, damnit.

Of course, Pit not doing jack by-gum diddly also meant that Ike; lucky, blessed individual that he happens to be; got to play defense all alone at the front door. The front door needed defending because Samus had staggered all the way up to it and was clawing like a zombie ten minutes away from brains-starvation. In true cutesy-cliché battle-royale style, Ike had snatched up a handy vegetable strainer (to throw over his head for a helmet) and a wooden mixing spoon (just in case he needed to mix things) and hunkered down, teeth grit, with his back against the door. Ike may have been a lot saner than most of the other Brawlers, but that didn't mean he was a lot _smarter_ as well, and his plan for dealing with Samus boiled down to a resounding "Well, maybe she'll forget."

Eventually Samus earned enough experience to level up to the point where she learned the new move of "Pound on the Door" (however, she could only learn four moves and had to delete her older move of "Claw at the Door like a Zombie" in order to make room for the new one). Every fist-fall rattled Fatty's skull, and his strainer-helmet eventually fell off and danced across the kitchen floor.

Ike clenched up and hugged his knees. "_Piiiit_," he whined, but Pit was too busy acting like an angsty little fourteen-year-old Linkin Park-patronizing tool bag to actually get up and help his buddy.

Splinters began raining down from the hinges and the wood began to pop. Ike, horrified, scrambled to his feet and stood back, brandishing his wooden mixing spoon like a katana. He glanced over his shoulder at Pit, who was still pretending to be a carpet stain. "Well, kiddo," Ike said shakily, "I'm not gonna pretend any of this has been fun or that it's been particularly nice knowing you. So I guess just thanks for not being an even bigger flaming ass bag. I'll always appreciate it."

Ike turned back around, a single manly tear clinging to his cheek, ready to embrace his inevitable destruction, when he was suddenly and unceremoniously blinded by a flash of light.

He squelched and immediately clutched his face (after throwing his ever-important wooden mixing spoon across the counter and upsetting the pepper grinder), falling to the ground and howling in agony. To the layman this reaction might seem a tad extreme, but what they fail to realize is that, okay, it _was_ a tad extreme. I like extreme things, _okay_, it's my dayum fanfiction and I'll write whatever bullshit I want.

As Ike's vision slowly returned to him, the image of Pikachu squatting on his kitchen counter gradually came into focus. He was flapping a little square photograph back and forth, one yellow paw resting on a camera. And not a normal camera either, mind you; it was one of those ghetto-ass print-on-the-spot piece of shit old cameras.

Ike had a lot of questions, and so naturally he began with the most pressing. "Mmmblehem?"

Pikachu nodded understandingly. He Pika-waddled across the counter and found a greasy old KFC bucket that Ike had been a bit too attached to to throw away, flipped it upside down, and taped the photograph to the side. By this time it had developed, and Ike's face, complete with expression of "Jesus Christ Superstar, No" was clearly visible.

His KFC bucket sculpture hoisted up with one paw, Pikachu strolled over and opened the front door.

"Look!" Pikachu cried, flailing the bucket at Samus, "Ike reconsidered! He loves you now!" A sound of joy erupted in the hallway, and Pikachu flung the bucket at her and slammed the door back shut.

He wiped a few beads of sweat off his fluffy yellow rat brow and turned back around to find Ike staring at him, incredulous.

"What?"

Ike was indignant. "Mmmblehem?" he repeated, sterner this time.

Pikachu shrugged and kind of shifted his little Pika-paws around uncomfortably. He gestured out towards the hallway. "Well…you know," he explained, very helpful. Ike, being the sweltering dumbass that he is, still didn't understand, and so Pikachu was obliged to elaborate. "Alright, listen," he began, heaving a sigh of resignation. "I know she's a crazy bitch. I've known it freaking forever. She's been my roommate since the original Smash Bros, huh, and I've been trying for years to get Sakurai to let me switch and room with Nana or Zelda, or even freaking Jigglypuff, or hell, _anyone_, but he's just a massive asshole and won't let me do it. And I've tried to put up with her! Really! I have!" A tone of desperation was creeping into his Pika-voice, and wide-eyed he shook his adorable little yellow fists under Ike's nose. "But there's only so much you can take!

"That's why I was so thrilled when she told me that she loved you." Pikachu shifty-eyed here and began nervously wringing his paws. "I had hoped that if the two of you could hit it off, _she _would want to room with _you_, and then I could finally goddamn be rid of her." He stiffened here, and a look of consternation came over his yellow rat face. "Stupid Sakurai's such a toolbag," he snapped, stomping his foot and scowling. He scoffed, and in a tone of undeniable scorn added, "He'd do a favor for _Samus_, but that's just because he thinks she's hotter than I am." Pikachu stopped here, fists clenched and glowering at Ike as if daring him to agree.

Ike was much too weirded out for that kind of brouhaha, and he just kind of stood back at a safe yet respectful distance, nodding politely.

Pikachu seemed to realize how goddamn crazy he was sounding, because he suddenly unclenched his fists and shrugged, awkward. "Anyway, it really wasn't my place, encouraging her like that. You gotta understand. I just wanted her out of my _life_, and if that meant ruining _yours_, well then, I was down with it." He shrugged again. "No hard feelings, I hope."

Ike is kind of an asshole, and he didn't really want to forgive Pikachu for almost ruining his life even though he had made such a _heartfelt effort at apology_. But hey, on the flipside, Pikachu _had_ just managed to stave Samus off, and Ike, despite his shriveled little black raisin heart, figured that the guy at least deserved a little gratitude for _that_.

For awhile he just nodded and smiled in what he hoped was an acceptable gesture of thanks, but then he began thinking. Ike blinked unevenly and wondered in a distant way if there had been any skin left in the bottom of that KFC bucket. "Why'd you have to give her my bucket, anyway?"

"It had your scent," Pikachu said shortly.

"Do you think I might be able to ever wrestle it back from her?"

Pikachu stared at him.

Ike wasn't often at the receiving end of the "Jesus Christ what fetid bullshit is dribbling out of your mouth now" stares, and it was enough to shame him into quickly changing the subject. "I'm actually sort of glad how all this worked out," he began with a clap.

Pikachu grumbled something noncommittal while sniffing at a small pile of the now-crusted-over ominous fluid left over from Mr. Game & Watch the night before.

"Well, sure," Ike continued, as if Pikachu had expressed some kind of hungered interest. "I mean, from the sounds of things, you've got to deal with a lunatic as a roommate, too. People just don't freaking believe me when I tell them what Pit's like." He gestured over his shoulder to where Pit was still facedown in a puddle of his own drool. Ike shifted his feet nervously. "I mean, I saw how Samus is firsthand. And…and then when you showed up and said she was your _roommate_, I just thought, you know, I might have found somebody who finally understands."

That was it. Pikachu paused mid fluid-sniff and turned to look at him curiously. "So what are you saying, Ike?"

"Just that!" He said quickly, "No, no, that was all. I was just thinking, that, uh, you know."

"What?"

Ike sighed and rapped the countertop with his knuckles. "You gotta understand, this is, uh, pretty awkward for me. But, I just thought…you know, with us having all this in common…maybe you and I could get lunch sometime? Talk for awhile?"

"Ike," Pikachu put his paws up in a gesture of "woah woah woah, now slow the hell down," "Are you _actually_ coming onto me?"

Ike flushed red and might have uttered a few words of garbled nonsense intended to dispel this _obviously false_ accusation.

"Because," Pikachu said, his brow furrowing, "You _do_ realize I'm a freaking _Pokémon_, right?"

A little bubble of hope coalesced in Ike's chest and he inhaled sharply. "That's not your only problem is it? Because, I-I mean, _I_ don't mind if you're a Pokémon! I think you're really cute! I mean, as Pokémon go, you know…." He trailed off here, because Pikachu was giggling at him.

"Oh, Ike," he sighed, "You really are a sweet guy. I almost wish it could work out."

But Ike was plucky now, and he fell to his knees and grabbed Pikachu's tiny paws in his hands and shook. "But _why not_?" he demanded. "What on earth is holding you back? Tell me, please!"

Pikachu just shook his head and repeated, "It could never work out."

"But _why_!"

"You can't love me the way you think you can. And I don't want to be hurt. And I don't want to hurt you, either."

"No, no, no," Ike cooed, and he brushed a lock of gold fur from Pikachu's eyes. Such affectionate gestures his fingers normally reserved only for peeling back the paper on his Chick-fil-A number one. "No, you could _never_ hurt me. And I wouldn't hurt you either. We're stronger than that. We're better than that, right?"

Pikachu shook his head. "I'm not what you think I am."

This one caught Ike off guard. His mind did the sound of a single bacon frying. Rather than trying to continue in poetically reassuring Pikachu that he had no fears to legitimize, he decided to sit back, scratch his chin, and hazard a tactful guess at what Pikachu wasn't.

"So…you aren't really a Pokémon?"

Pikachu rolled his eyes. "No, dipshit, I'm not a boy."

The single bacon in Ike's mind stopped frying and rolled out of the frying pan onto the kitchen floor where it was noshed by a bloodhound who left naught but a smear of drool and slobbers in the place where before the single bacon had once lain. And that was how goddamn speechless Fatty was.

"Wait!" Ike objected suddenly, eyes widening as his mental functions slowly returned, "So you mean that you're a _girl_?"

"Well, that _is_ pretty much the only option left," he replied.

But Ike was a clever one, and he waggled a finger at Pikachu and his nonsense-spewing Pika-head. "If you're a girl, why has the narration been addressing your character with masculine pronouns throughout the entire copy?"

Pikachu did kind of a WTF maneuver with his hands and spat, "I don't freaking know! To throw people, I guess! Who gives a shit?" He huffed and crossed his arms. "I don't write these damn things. But maybe the pronouns will spontaneously shift and we can all get over ourselves. If we're lucky." She mused the last part aloud, scratching with a dainty thoughtfulness at her chin, and by the way, she was all woman.

Ike was a bit distraught and a bit beclempt, but by god, he was still riding his high from being crowned Badass Freaking Brawlmaster the day before, and he didn't want to ruin it by showing even an ounce of weakness in the form of giving a shit, so instead he just set his jaw and shook his head. "Well," he deadpanned, "That answers _that_, at any rate. But if you were so adamant about getting Samus out of your life, why did you even bother with rescuing me at all?"

Pikachu sighed and shook her head. She looked back up at Ike with an expression of hurt and disappointment. "I know your life is hard, Ike. I know you have to deal with a lot of people who don't respect anyone or anything. I know that you're a cynic. But is it _really_ so difficult to imagine that maybe, _maybe_, I rescued you to do something good and for no bigger reason?"

Ike stared at her.

"Okay, _fine_." Pikachu broke after all of about a twentieth of a second, scrunched her eyes and shook her head from shame and consternation. "So it turns out that I'm just a selfish bitch too. So sue me. We're all assholes here, learn to freaking deal." She did one of those elegant gargle-snort-spit things where you hack a wad of boogers on the floor. Everybody in my family calls that "hocking a loogie," but apparently that's just a weird goddamn redneck backwaters West Virginia sort of thing and nobody else in the world understands what we're saying. Hence the explanation. I hope you enjoyed the imagery, too.

Anyway, my point was that Pikachu was trying to be all hardcore, huh, and once she had hocked her loogie, she straightened herself and glowered at Ike. "So I didn't _really_ care if _you_ got hurt in Samus's psychotic rage. But, unfortunately," and here Pikachu shook her head, exasperated, "And, I might add, this was something that I hadn't known before; but somebody _else_ was liable to be hurt by her, too."

Ike instinctively looked back at Pit and his drooling state of emotional despondency. "So…you don't care if Samus kills _me_, but when it comes to Pit…" Ike's eyes widened suddenly with the rush of epiphany. Yeah, it really took him that long. I told you he was only sane and didn't have the smart half to go with it.

Pikachu gnawed on her lip and bopped up and down on her little Pika-toes. "See, Samus has pretty much wanted to date goddamn everyone on the Brawl roster for whatever reason or another. But I knew that if she fell in love with _you_, and the two of _you_ roomed together, that would mean _Pit_ would need a new roommate, too." She chanced a peek at him and started squirming from sheer delight. "That could be _me_." She suddenly stopped and asked in a tone of uncertainty, "You-you don't think that's crazy, do you? I mean, I know I don't even know the guy, not really, but I just think he's straight adorable. You know what I'm saying?"

Ike was so spitting mad that he could barely get his cholesterol-gristled lungs to breathe evenly, let alone sculpt a civilized and cohesive response. He wanted to shout that it _was_ crazy, and that _she_ was crazy, and that if she thought things were bad with Samus as a roommate, just wait until she had _Pit_ as a _boyfriend_. But Pikachu was looking up at him with her sweet, hopeful, eyes, and Ike couldn't find the strength to jab such obscene remarks at her, not even in his own disappointment. So instead, he merely sighed and nodded once more at his half-dead roommate and mumbled something halfheartedly about how she ought to go and talk to him.

Pikachu squatted next to his immobile head. She got bored after a couple seconds and started poking it, and the jabs became increasingly violent as he continued to just lie there.

"Come on, damnit, quit being emo and wake up already."

Pit finally cracked an eye at her and sat up. He mopped the drool off the left side of his face and heaved a gusty and forlorn sigh at her. "Look, if you're just here to gloat, you should know that I'm just not all that up to bitching at you right now. And that's just kind of backhanded on your part, huh? So why don't you come back tomorrow, alright? You can say some nasty things about my mother, I'll call you a cuntlicking monkeyknocker, we scuffle, I kick your ass, but then we go out for shots and everything's hunky-dorey. That sounds pretty good to me, right? But not today. Give me a damn minute. I mean _really_, I just had my whole freaking _life_ torn asunder, are you really _that_ soulless that you can't even cut a guy a break?"

Pikachu cupped his face in her hands and stroked his cheek. "I'm not soulless," she whispered. Pit looked stunned. "Oh, you poor dear. Samus is such a fool." She kissed him on the tip of the nose. "I'm glad for it, though."

For awhile, Pit just stared at her, astonished beyond reaction. He eventually limbered out, though, and, a bit hesitantly, gathered Pikachu in his arms and cradled her there. Pikachu sighed, flicked her ears, nuzzled him. But before things could get too disgustingly sweet, however, she decided that she had better add, "Don't you ever freaking call me a cuntlicking monkeyknocker, though. I swear to god, you will freaking die."

* * *

A few days had passed, and Ike got up one morning feeling especially sour, and he stumbled into the kitchen only to find that Pit was up and frying oran-berry pancakes. He grinned at Ike and twiddled his spatula at him. "Pikachu's coming for breakfast!"

"I don't give a _goddamn_," Ike snapped, eyes narrowed. He swiped the bowl of orans from the counter and glowered down at their bright, taunting, jeering blueness. "And these things aren't even _edible_ for humans, Pit. Are you trying to freaking _kill_ us?"

Pit yanked the bowl back out of his hands and chucked it back onto the counter, although there really wasn't much reason in it at this point; all the oran berries had since flown out and scattered all over the kitchen. "Technicalities, Fatty," he scolded him. "Beggars can't be choosers. Not even when the choice is between free poisonous pancakes and going to the trouble of making yourself a whole bowl of contaminant-free Cap'n Crunch. That's just not the way the world works, Fatty. You are going to exploit my generosity, and by gum, you are going to _enjoy_ it."

While he had been talking, Ike had slunk over and gone to the horrible trouble of pouring himself a bowl of contaminant-free Cap'n Crunch like the ungrateful little snobbish bastard that he is. Pit sniffed at him and went back to flipping his deathcakes.

Ike stuffed a spoonful into his mouth and proceeded to bitch: "So is Pikachu going to be around here all the time now, or what?"

Pit stopped poking at the deathcakes abruptly and he turned to Ike, wryly grinning. "Now _Fatty_," he said, "Fatty, you are not _jealous_, are you?"

Ike turned red and spat, "No, goddamnit, shut up!"

But Pit ignored him. "Because Fatty, there's no sense in being jealous about that sort of thing. If you're going to fall in love, you should just let it happen, you know? That really is the best way. No use in pining away for what's lost to you, huh, no point in dreaming of what you might never get. Just let it happen all by spontaneity, huh? That's how you know it's right."

Pit turned back around then, because his pancakes had begun to evolve some thick black smoke and he decided they probably needed some attention. And Ike, too exhausted by a fate so cruel to squander a free moment of privacy, sobbed quietly into his bowl of cereal.

**THE END.**

**

* * *

Afterword: **Whoa nilly. Yeah, I know it got a little gnarly there at the end in terms of political correctness. If I offended anybody, just remember that I don't actually mean anything and that I'm just trying to be funny. Key word there being "trying."

Well that was fun! As it's probably pretty obvious, I had basically no idea in hell how this was going to turn out when I started it. Eh. Meh. Whatevs.

As per promised, the final pic:

img98(dot)imageshack(dot)us/img98/2954/fk008(dot)jpg  
Yeah, it makes me a little sad, too.

Anyway, thanks one more time for sticking with me through this vapid nonsense. And hey, if you've got about 45 seconds to kill, you should shimmy onto my profile page and take the stupid ass survey I put up about what I should do now. It's a great way for you to burn 45 seconds _and_ help stroke my ego all at the same time.

Peace, monkeys. Peace.

~Ze Dybbuk


End file.
